


No Longer Alone (Again)

by asingerofsongs, MayGlenn



Series: Stars and Skies [25]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Blow Jobs, Children, F/M, Finn Has A Type and it's Reckless Pilots, Finn Needs A Hug, Finn's Family, M/M, Multi, Rescue Missions, Rogue One References, Rose Loves Animals, Rose is a Slicer AU because DJ doesn't exist in our version, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-07-27 11:42:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 33,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16218311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asingerofsongs/pseuds/asingerofsongs, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayGlenn/pseuds/MayGlenn
Summary: “Are you okay?”Finn pushed his cheek against Poe's fingers, nuzzling against his palm. “I'm notnotokay."It didn't get him far, as Poe just continued to wait until he exploded:“What if—what if she doesn't want to be found? By anyone? She settled onJedha.She doesn't even live in a town, and the locals are helping hide her, if she even is there,” he said. They had found so little about her—only a few pictures of a woman Finn didn't remember, and a last known location. The reflection he saw in the Force mirror matching the photos was his only "real" proof.One look at Finn's face made Poe swallow whatever encouragement he had been about to offer, and he replaced it with a firm hug. “Whatever happens, love, we’ve got your back.”“I never doubted that,” Finn rumbled, nose buried against Poe's neck. “I just...I have so many questions. And she's my mother. I want to know what she's like, what my family was like, and where we're from, and—everything. And I don't want her to be lonely. Like I was."





	1. Chapter 1

When they were en route and close enough to Jedha, Finn kicked everyone out of the cockpit so he could open a secured communication channel, alone.

There was about one settlement on all of Jedha, apparently, opposite the blast crater left there by the Empire. The information on his mother’s whereabouts of course didn't have an exact location, but it placed her—or, to be fair, someone who looked like her from orbital imaging—in or near a small village, one of the few still inhabited on the dying planet.

The village had, as far as he could tell, exactly one central comm station, so he started there.

The individual who answered was not especially fluent in Basic, and it took talking to several more people before Finn was able to communicate that he was looking for someone.

“Can you help me reach her, please? Give me a location?” he asked them.

“You are with the Empire!”

Finn tried not to scream with frustration. Where had these people been for thirty years? “I’m not with the Empire, ma’am. Nor with the First Order. I’m just trying to speak to a woman who may be calling herself Sara—”

“No, you will come here. If you are honest, we will tell you. If you are not…”

Finn sighed.

“Yes, okay, fine. We'll come there. Through the First Order. It’s fine. Tell your people not to shoot us down or anything, alright?” he said.

After he'd received what seemed like an affirmative, he disconnected and scrubbed a hand through his hair.

Rey came into the cockpit and sat down next to him. “Well, the good news is, the long range scanners are working properly now, so we won't be surprised again. Rose even thinks she could slice us through any First Order blockades without them noticing.”

Finn waited.

“The bad news is, this system is crawling with First Order activity. Maybe Poe's right and we should come back with the fleet.”

Finn tapped a nervous rhythm on the arm of the seat.

“No. I mean, whoever I just talked to is going to tell her we're coming, right? That's how this works?” he asked Rey, who gave an amused laugh.

“Oh, Finn. You do know that being from one backwater desert planet doesn't mean I know how _all_ of them work, right?” she asked, but when he only frowned at her, she stopped teasing and sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I think it's likely. Are you worried she'll run?”

Finn just shrugged.

“She might. I don't want to lose her,” he said, because if she did run, he wasn't sure they'd find her again. It had taken long enough the first time around, and her choice of living place didn't exactly seem as if she wanted to be found...

“We _won’t_ lose her,” Poe said, striding confidently into the cockpit. “If she’s half as Force sensitive as you and Sam, she’ll know her son is nearby. And if she tries to run, our wife is very good at shooting idiots out of the sky without killing them.”

“Ha,” Rey said.

He winked at them. “...So I was hoping we could just let dad find out that Sam can lift things with his mind sometimes now, I dunno if either of you told him? Because I sure didn’t!”

Rey pinched his arm. “Poe, you’re the worst! Of course I told him!”

“This is why your father threatens to disown you so often, you know,” Finn joked. He tugged at Poe's sleeve and pulled him closer to give him a kiss. Then he settled back into his seat.

“Oh, he just likes to have something to complain about,” Poe hummed, going back for another kiss, and then leaning over to kiss Rey, so she wouldn’t feel left out.

“Those the coordinates for this little village?” Finn asked idly, flicking a sheet of flimsi that was displaying an overhead picture of the little place. It looked old and worn, even in monochrome, nothing but a handful of little low-slung buildings hunkered down against endless rocky desert.

“Well, on that side, but out of sensor range, hopefully, of the First Order,” Poe said, and then keyed his voice louder: “That’s where our _expert slicer_ comes in, if she can possibly stop tinkering with my wife’s ship for five minutes!”

There was a clang, and a muffled shout. “It’s okay! I’ve almost got this cloaking thingy installed!”

“I thought I installed that already!” Rey said, and there was a diplomatic silence.

“Well, _yes_ , but, um. Ah. I’m just bringing it up to code!” Rose said, and after a few more clangs, she emerged, covered in grease.

Poe gave her a bemused look, though Rey’s was slightly distrustful.

“Well. Keep an eye out. I don't like this place,” Rey said as they neared the planet. She rubbed her arms as they broke out in goosebumps. This planet was making her nervous and they weren't even on it yet. Just thinking about it made her nervous, since they couldn’t even see it yet.

“Okay, well.” Poe stood up, ceding the copilot seat to Rose.

Rey grabbed the yoke.

Poe put a hand on her shoulder. “Love. We’ve got a bit before we come out of hyperspace. It’ll ding us, remember? Let’s let Rose do her thing, okay?”

Rey looked over at Rose, who grinned back at her.

“So the cloaking thing?” she asked the other woman.

“It's so up to code we practically don't exist, Rey. It doesn't just keep the sensors from seeing us, it _actively makes them think we're somewhere else._ We're practically a ghost ship!”

Then remembered she was supposed be doing something. “Uh, later though. After I do this whole. Thing. With the slicing,” she added as the three of them stared at her with varying expressions of amusement. “Let you know if I find anything weird.”

There was a brief, awkward pause, and then she turned to her work.

“Right,” Poe said, with a chuckle. Finn and Rey were old souls in young bodies, but Rose always really made him feel _old_.

“Okay, Finn? Let’s gear up, let the ladies handle this,” Poe said, beckoning Finn back into the ship, mainly so he could get him alone and make sure he was doing all right.

Finn pushed to his feet and stepped around Rey (she smiled angelically at him as he tried not to trip over her) to follow Poe, already mentally ticking off a list of things they would need. Warm clothes, mostly, lots of them. If he was going to spend any time on a frigid desert planet, he was going to at least _try_ to stay warm.

But he was so deep in thought, he didn't realize when Poe stopped in front of him, and he walked right into him with a startled yelp.

“Did we bring enough jackets?” he asked sheepishly, determined to keep his mind on something more useful than worrying about his mother or Jedha or that the First Order had claimed the planet—for taking kidnapped children to.

“Yeah, yeah, we brought enough jackets,” Poe said softly, stepping close to Finn and tracing his fingertips down Finn’s cheek. He waited until Finn looked at him. “Are you okay?”

Finn pushed his cheek against Poe's fingers, nuzzling against his palm like Crix when he was being affectionate. “I'm not _not_ okay,” he said, being a little evasive.

It didn't get him far, as Poe just continued to wait until he exploded:

“What if—what if she doesn't _want_ to be found? By anyone? She settled on _Jedha_. She doesn't even live in a town, and the locals are helping hide her, if she even is there,” he said. They had found so little about her—only a few pictures of a woman Finn didn't remember, and a last known location. The reflection he saw in the Force mirror matching the photos was his only "real" proof.

His heart felt as it it had hung a number of hopes on this stranger who was his mother, and Finn feared failing—it would be like losing her, every bit as surely as he'd lost her in that long ago vision.

But he couldn't find the words to explain all of this excitement and terror and uncertainty and anticipation to Poe or to anyone else.

Finn kept going down this rabbit-hole, and Poe squeezed his shoulders, trying to pull him back. “ _Buddy_.”

But one look at Finn's face made Poe swallow whatever encouragement he had been about to offer, and he replaced it with a firm hug. “Whatever happens, love, we’ve got your back.”

Finn leaned into the hug with a long, exhausted sigh.

“I never doubted that,” he rumbled, nose buried against Poe's neck. He'd sooner doubt the sunrise than doubt that his spouses had his back. “I just...I have so many questions. And she's my mother. I want to know what she's like, what my family was like, and where we're from, and— _everything_. And I don't want her to be lonely. Like I was.” 

“I know, buddy,” Poe agreed.

Finn pulled away just enough to nuzzle Poe's cheek and smiled softly. Worries aside, he really _was_ excited. That was part of the terror of it.

“She has a whole family she doesn't even know about—and she could meet your dad, and the General, and Luke when he wakes up!” he said, brightening.

“Yeah, and I can't wait to meet her, either,” Poe said, enthusiastically squeezing Finn's shoulder.  “And if she's any kind of mother, she's gonna be so proud of you, I know it.”

Poe looked forward to knowing _a_ mother again, since he had lost his so young. He had a few reservations, of course, like this could be a dead end, or she could be alive but working with the First Order for all they knew—but you didn't survive long in this business without hope. “Let's see what kind of speeder they sent us with…”

“I think they sent two. Something about splitting up to search if we needed to,” Finn said, happy enough to be distracted as Poe led the way to where the speeders were stored.

He ducked into the poorly lit cargo bay before the door had even opened all the way and turned to watch for Poe's reaction. Finn hadn't seen the first of the two speeders, but the second was a little swoop bike, and he was fairly certain Poe and Rey were _both_ going to lose it when they saw it.

“Oh, hot dang!” Poe whooped, rushing into the hangar and slinging a leg over the speeder. “Finno, check out this baby. You want to hear a speeder purr, this is the one you're gonna want to ride. Here, Finn, get on!”

“ _In_ the _Falcon_ ? Are you _trying_ to get us both in trouble?” Finn laughed, but he went to join Poe and gave the speeder a once-over. It _was_ a beautiful machine, and looked very fast. It was built with balance in mind, too, which he respected given the speed at which it was meant to travel.

“I mean, I was just gonna turn it on,” Poe laughed. “Just so you can feel a beautiful instrument like this vibrating between your thighs. Anyway, in open space I outrank everyone on this ship.”

Finn threw Poe a coy look and swung his leg over the speeder to settle behind him. It was, he discovered, quite comfortable—especially with Poe in front of him to hold onto.

“There's no way Rey isn't going to fight you for this,” he purred in Poe's ear, purely for the sake of teasing him and keeping both of their minds off of other things...

“Mm, buddy, you know that only turns me on,” Poe hummed, rocking back against Finn and starting the speeder up.

Finn laughed, because _of course_ he knew that, and took advantage of Poe's proximity to kiss the back of his neck. And if the kiss maybe included teeth, well, who could possibly blame him? “She'll probably fight you for flying it around in here, too.”

“Ooh, you know just what to say to a guy,” Poe teased, letting himself shiver just a little, and begin to let the little thrill warm his belly when a shout interrupted them—

“You better not be trying to drive that inside my ship!” came Rey’s voice over the PA system.

Poe and Finn laughed. “How does she do that?!”

“I think it's the Force,” Finn said.

“No one needs the Force to predict what Poe will do when he finds a swoop bike,” Rey responded.

“Hey now!”

“She's right, I even knew, and I'm as Force sensitive as a rock,” Rose added. “That will also not stop me from making you clean the X-Wings with a toothbrush _again_ if you hurt my bike.”

Finn looked down at the bike and then around the cargo bay. “ _Your_ bike?” he asked, and there was a beat of silence.

“Well, yeah, as much as it is anyone's. I'm the one who got her flying again. Someone crippled her accelerator so she was _soooo sloooow_ , which is totally wrong for a little swoop like her. So I fixed it, tada, functioning swoop bike for secret missions,” she chattered.

“That's not fair,” Poe said. “If I got to keep everything I fixed...well, okay, I probably _break_ more than I fix, to be fair…”

He laughed and shut off the engine, shaking his head. “You guys are mean.”

“I know, we're the worst,” Finn agreed solemnly.

He leaned forward slightly to swing his leg over the bike, but it gave him the opportunity to tease his husband one more time. He nuzzled behind his ear and then nipped him gently, and then he was off the bike and grinning innocently.

“The _very worst_ ,” he emphasized.

Poe was up and pushing Finn against the bulkhead in a hungry instant, grasping his bicep with his mechno arm and giving it a warning squeeze.

“Yeah, well. Maybe it's why I like you so much,” he hummed, kissing Finn hard until they were both breathless. “You get any _more_ ‘worst’ and maybe I just won't be able to help myself.”

“Oh,” Finn said, smirking, and let Poe crowd him back against the bulkhead.

He slung one arm over Poe's shoulder and tangled his fingers in the short hair that curled against the back of his neck. Poe's hair was getting a little shaggy, Finn thought, but he kind of liked it—besides making him look scruffy and rogueish, it made it that much easier to pull. Finn would never, ever get tired of the way Poe responded to having his hair pulled, especially when it made him so very easy to wind up.

“What exactly do you plan on doing if I insist on being the _worst_?” he asked.

“Have I told you about how me and my left hand can field strip a blaster in 2.7 seconds?” Poe hummed, grinning as he leaned in, and wedged his knee between Finn’s legs. He had zero intention of going anywhere. “I think we could strip _you_ in half that.”  

Finn rolled his hips and tried to press closer against Poe, leaving forward to catch his mouth in a kiss that communicated exactly what he thought of _that_ idea— _Bet you can't, but please do try_.

“I can last longer than _that_ , you know. Surely it hasn't been quite that long…” Finn said.

He dropped his hands to Poe's waist and slid them under his shirt to rest on bare skin, enjoying the expression on Poe's face as he scratched up to his ribs. Warmth curled in his belly and radiated—lower, mostly—and he grinned.

“Okay, maybe it _has_ been a little while…” he chuckled, hands sliding down into Poe’s pants. “Anyway, you’ve used that line on me before, and I’m pretty sure last time it was more than three seconds…”

“Have I?” Poe wondered with a grin. “Maybe getting hitched is making me sloppy, if I’m re-using lines.”

He leaned in to kiss Finn, and had his shirt and pants unbuttoned before their lips parted.

Finn was a little ashamed of the desperate whimper that he gave Poe when they broke for a moment to breathe. He pawed at his shirt and managed to take care of the buttons, but he wasn't as fast as Poe—not that he'd admit it—and so he was still kissing him when he finally got the button on his pants undone and palmed him, briefly, through the front of them just to drive Poe a little crazy.

“Finn,” Poe groaned, tugging Finn’s pants down and dropping to his knees to get a sloppy mouthful of him. “I’m gonna—you’re—”

Maybe marriage _was_ ruining his sexytalk game, because Poe found himself magnetically drawn to Finn’s dick, and might have laughed at himself if he hadn’t already had a throat full of cock, his hands full of Finn’s ass, and Finn’s hands in his hair. He moaned, quite happily, instead of finishing whatever banthashit he had been trying to say.

Finn only hoped, very briefly, that their comms were _not_ still broadcasting before Poe’s mouth was on him and any thoughts that didn't involve giving Poe’s hair encouraging little tugs went clear out of his head.

“ _Force_ , Poe,” he gasped as he tried to keep just still enough to not gag his husband. Instead, he tangled his fingers more thoroughly in his hair and raked his fingers along his scalp for good measure as he pulled the soft strands and tried, with limited success, to set a sort of a rhythm.

“Poe, your— _kriffing hell—_ your mouth, you're so g— _yes_ , that again—good,” he practically whimpered. He was, he realized, not going to last very long at all, because this was Poe and _of course he wasn't_ , because his husband was wonderful and wicked and Finn just wanted to tell him, but he couldn't find words.

He settled for sounds, instead, knowing Poe would interpret his moans and whimpers and gasps accordingly.

Poe would have grinned, proudly, if his mouth weren't already occupied, but his next moan was half a laugh—he still had it—and Finn tasted and felt and smelled so good like this, he let himself get a little sloppy with spit until Finn's fingers tightening in his hair prepared him to swallow.

He sat back, wiping his chin and grinning at how debauched Finn looked, in under fifteen minutes.

“Man, talk about a quickie. Does your wife know you're this easy?” Poe teased, bold words for a man whose own erection was obvious in his unbuttoned pants.

Finn took Poe’s hand to draw him to his feet.

“Wanna come up here and say that to my face?” he asked slyly, nudging Poe’s pants down over his hips and kissing him eagerly. He paused for a moment before kissing him again as he got his hand on Poe's cock—but gently, aiming to make him beg just a _little_ in return for the sass.

Poe put his hands on Finn’s shoulders, hanging onto his neck, kissing him, sharing the taste of himself with Finn, and groaned, “Finn—”

He backed Finn against the bulkhead, and then stopped to look around them, and grinned manically. “You think we could move this to the swoop bike?”

Finn grinned back and gave Poe’s shoulder a playful since to direct him toward the swoop bike. “I think we should definitely _try_ ,” he said, though a single thought gave him pause, and he reached for Poe’s wrist to slow him. “But what if Rose kills us?”

“I told you I like living dangerously,” Poe moaned, dragging Finn back so he could straddle the swoop bike—backwards, and tugged Finn on with him. “But try not mentioning any subordinate officers when we’re in the middle of congress, huh? Especially subordinate officers we’re trying to hide from.”

Poe smiled and rolled back against the bike, feeling the curves of her cradling him as he pulled Finn down on top of him.

“I'll do my best,” Finn teased as he pressed Poe back to the swoop bike and hummed appreciatively at him. It took some doing before Poe could balance on it and lay back with his head on the handlebars, but it was worth it.

“Maybe we should get a swoop bike,” he suggested, because Poe was painfully handsome like this, half-clothed and practically laying on the bike like he _belonged_ there and always had, perfectly in his element—or on it, at least.

“Mm, yeah, keep talking like _that_ ,” Poe moaned, knowing he was being a stereotype and not caring.

“Stars, Poe. You're perfect,” Finn purred as he tangled his fingers in Poe's hair and gave his cock a quick, heated stroke with the other.

“Hhhnnuuh, Finn,” Poe groaned, body spasming as he neared completion and crested, kissing Finn to stifle the shout he wanted to give instead as he came all over himself and Finn's hand and lay back, exhausted, onto the bike.

“Oh _Force_ , you two!” cried Rey, quite ruining the afterglow as they scrambled off the bike. “Rose made me come check on you, even though I was _sure_ you weren't…”

“Um, uh, what? No, we weren't, we were...uh…” Finn started, as if there was any way he could talk their way out of this, lying on top of each other and smelling like sex.

When he decided he couldn't, he gave Rey a cheeky grin instead. “We are not the husbands you're looking for,” he said in a close approximation of a line from the _Luke Skywalker Adventures_.

Rey rolled her eyes. “You might be Force sensitive, love, but no.”

Still, though, she left them alone to get cleaned up.

Poe laughed. “Oh, man. Worth it, though.”

He went to the washing up station and cleaned himself off as well as he could, still grinning, and then grabbed cleaning supplies for the bike. “You wanna help me buff the assprints off the bike, Finno, or are you still freaking out? If I’m gonna have to fuck you again to make you relax, I’d rather not have to clean her off twice.”


	2. Chapter 2

They dropped out of lightspeed hours later, already cloaked, and Rey yelped as she was forced to barrel roll and yank back on the yoke as hard as she could, narrowly avoiding a star destroyer that loomed suddenly in front of them.

“Kriffing _shit_!” she shouted, and everyone else just yelled as they shot along the bottom of the destroyer.

There was a shriek of distressed metal as the rectangle dish on their ventral side was shorn completely off.

“Alright, alright, I hear you, up you go,” Rey snapped through clenched teeth as proximity alarms started going off and the _Falcon_ rattled around them.

“Rey? Uh—” Finn started as more alarms went off.

“I _know_ ! I've _got it_ !” Rey practically screeched, but she did have it—the _Falcon_ ’s nose finally pulled up and they spun away from the Star Destroyer.

“This would be a lot easier if you remembered you had a copilot,” Poe grunted, shoving Rey off from trying to reach around him for the reverse thrusters, but he was ahead of her, and flashing the thrusters to give them just a bit more kickback, enough to get away clean—mostly.

Rey whooped as they cleared the much larger ship.

“Okay, but we _just_ repaired that dish, love,” Poe sighed. “Which we do kinda need, I’ll point out.”

“That was...unintentional,” she said.

“Okay, stay low, stay low,” Poe snapped, “or I _am_ taking over.”

“You’ve still crashed more times than me,” Rey muttered softly, though she did take it low, hugging the large transport that the star destroyers were guarding.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Are we getting our pictures?”

“Well, guess what we needed that dish for?”

Finn peeled his fingers from their death grip on his seat and looked over at Rose, who was wide-eyed and about to hyperventilate.

“Are we dead?” she asked shakily, and Finn reached over to pat her arm in sympathy.

“You're up, master slicer,” he told her, and Poe got up to let her slide into his seat.

Rose shook herself before taking a deep breath.

“Okay. Yes. Slicing. Let's do this thing,” she said, and Finn had to give her credit: she was tough, for all there was still a small moss-hopper living happily in one of her pockets because she never did have the heart to make it leave.

“Right,” Rose said, whiteknuckling the controls before they began working quickly, almost immediately. “Okay, we should have about a minute before they can pinpoint us—”

“Or til someone looks out a window,” Poe said.

“Or heart that thump on the side of their hull,” Finn added.

“—Which should give me just enough time to slice through the net they’ve got around the planet.”

Her fingers worked at lightning speed to crunch the code, slipping different keycards in until one matched up. “Aha! You know, all that stuff Mr. Calrissian taught me really makes this all pretty easy! I just—whoops!”

She giggled as an alarm blipped.

“Is that bad?” Poe asked, urgently.

“Oops! No, it's fine,” Rose answered, tapping one last button with a triumphant grin as she turned to Rey, Poe, and Finn.

“All set! And we still have—” She paused to look at the chronometer in the middle of her control panel, “—About twenty or thirty seconds.”

“Uh, well?” Poe said.

Finn made a hurrying motion at Rey, who arched her eyebrows at him before turning back to her own controls.

Rose vacated the co-pilot’s seat so Poe could have it back and shuffled out of the way to return to her seat. She very pointedly buckled her harness and patted her pocket to make sure her small friend was okay—he poked his nose out just far enough to nibble gently at her thumb before disappearing again.

“Alright, let's hope your friends were being honest when they said they wouldn't shoot us down,” Rey muttered, cutting a glance to Finn as they sped, perhaps a bit hot, for the planet’s surface. “Not that they could actually _hit_ the two best pilots in the Resistance,” she added with a cocky grin.

“Let’s hope not, anyway,” Poe and Rey said together, and looked at each other, and grinned, and took them down toward the planet without incident.

“So, ah, that was a lot of star destroyers,” Poe commented, nonchalantly, as they hit the atmosphere.

“I counted four,” Rey said.

“Yeah. What do you make of that, Colonel Dameron?” Poe asked.

“That the First Order is working an important operation in the area. Didn't our intelligence say they might be keeping children here? I'd say it's likely…” Finn said, very nearly growling.

Kids. _Kids!_ —like him, like Sevens and Deeks and Timons. And like Rokko and his friends, who they'd saved on Endor. He wanted to find their base and take it apart with his bare hands, and if they'd had the manpower to do it, he would have.

They didn't have the manpower, though, and it wasn't why they were here. At least now they could verify the intelligence reports—and with luck, they would go home with Finn's mother, at least, since Jedha clearly wasn't safe. Maybe next time the Resistance would let them bring the fleet.

“At least the locals aren't shooting at us yet,” Finn said, trying for optimism. “We better hail them, though, since they can’t detect us.”

On short-range comms, Finn recognized the voice as the person he had been in contact with about his mother.

“You will land at the exact coordinates we are transmitting to you and power down your weapons and engines. Our security forces will meet you to verify your identity, and if they are in order, we will give you the information you requested,” they said in a terse, clipped tone.

“Understood. Thank you,” Finn answered, and there was a soft click as the planet-side line disconnected. Finn looked around at the others and gave an uncertain shrug.

“That’s a little creepy,” Poe said. “Are we sure they’re not going to bring us your mother in a briefcase in unmarked denominations?”

“It’s a big deal we even have this contact, Poe,” Rey said.

“And that we made it down undetected,” Rose added. “If we brought anyone after us, they sure wouldn’t be talking to us at all.”

“I guess it's good they're protective…” Finn ventured. “Can you imagine living on this planet, though? First the Empire destroys your capital city and plunges your planet half into ruin in the process, and then the First Order shows up and decides to use your planet as a base to gather and train kidnapped children? I guess it's a miracle they even answer communications from anyone anymore.”

Which really begged the question, for the hundredth time, how and why his mother was here.

Rey took them low over the planet's surface to get to the landing coordinates, and they kicked up a mix of sand and ice as the _Falcon_ landed. There was a small contingent of heavily armed guards standing by, and as soon as Rey cut the engines they stepped forward to wait for the ramp to open.

“You and Poe stay here in case we need to leave in a hurry,” Finn told Rey, “We'll comm you when we're sure they're not going to use those weapons. Rose, you come with me.”

He nodded toward the ramp, but Rose stood up uncertainty. “Why me?”

“Yeah,” Poe said. “Why wouldn’t you want the woman who can control people’s minds—”

“Poe, I don’t actually—”

“—Or the guy who can sweet-talk his way out of a rathtar pit?” Poe finished, ignoring the interruption.

“Because I'd prefer the two best pilots in the Resistance be where they can pilot us out of here if things go wrong. I just don't want us all in a convenient, easily captured bunch when we haven't even met them and know they're already nervous,” Finn responded.

Poe regarded him thoughtfully. “It’s a nice story.”

Rose still looked uncertain.

“I also don't want to be completely without backup, and I recall someone wanted more field experience,” Finn added with a slight smile, because for a moment Rose looked actually indignant.

“I’ll go, I—I’m just—awkward. And small,” she said, and then regarded Finn again. “But maybe if we’re going for completely unintimidating, you and me _would_ be best.”

Pulling on a hat with warm ear-flaps, she walked out of the cockpit.

Poe and Rey managed to wait at least a few seconds before snorting.

“She got youuu…” Rey giggled.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” Finn grumbled, and went after Rose.

They met the guards at the ramp, although the lot of them had at least lowered their weapons. They didn't appear to be ready to shoot them on sight, at least, although they still didn't look friendly. One woman, maybe in charge, or maybe just the one who spoke Basic most fluently, stepped up to meet them about halfway down the ramp and gave them both an utterly unreadable look.

“Are there not four of you?” she asked suspiciously.

“There are. But, like you, we have chosen to exercise caution. I was told you wished to verify our identities?” he asked, trying to strike a friendly _tone,_ at least, since it seemed that friendly conversation was right out. These people took paranoia to the next level.

The woman narrowed her eyes at Finn, and pointed at Rose, and barked something in a language Finn guessed was Jedhan, but didn’t know.

Rose made a startled squeak and shook her head, responding in a broken attempt at said language, the only word of which Finn understood was “Basic.”

“I really only speak Basic,” she said, apologetically. “I’m not from here, I’m from the Otomok system, and we left it when I was very little.”

Apparently, however, it was enough, the handful of words that Rose recalled from nearly twenty years ago, because the old woman lowered her weapon. “Power down your weapons and follow us. We’ll have speeders escort you to where you can hide your ship. How many children do you think you can carry?”

Finn was halfway through giving Poe and Rey the all clear when what the woman had just said caught up with him. He stuttered to a stop.

“Uh. Children? I mean, well… It depends on how young they are? We don't really have anywhere for babies to sleep, but we could probably figure something out, or…” He paused, thinking, but then started again.

“Wait, like—like rescued kids? Have you been rescuing kids from the First Order?” he asked, hoping with all his heart this was the case. If it was, they owed these people whatever they could give them in return.

“We are going to try. I thought that’s what you were here for? That’s why you wanted to see Sara?” The woman stopped, too, and peered at Finn. “Do you know her?”

“Not...exactly, no. She probably thinks I'm dead. Or a stormtrooper,” Finn said, and to the woman's questioning stare added, “She's my mother. But I was kidnapped when I was a baby. Like these children you’re trying to save right now.”

He stopped his nervous fidgeting to meet the woman's eyes as she looked at him like he was a somewhat confusing puzzle.

“Sara has never mentioned a son,” she answered. “But you look like her. You have her eyes.”

Finn was stunned, and didn’t recover until Poe blared in his comlink, “Hey, you guys okay down there? You gotta answer me, Finn, or I’m opening fire.”

“We’re okay!” squeaked Rose. “We’re getting an escort. Headed up now.”

When they were back in the ship, Poe met them coming up from the gunner’s position. “Hey,” he answered Finn’s glare, “you went quiet, what was I supposed to think? But how did it go?”

“They asked how many children I thought we could carry. Apparently my mother has either rescued them or is about to rescue then, and we're going to help,” Finn answered, sounding a little dazed. Nothing in his mother's file had suggested she was running some sort of underground rebellion with the Jedhans—of course, it _wouldn’t_ —but Finn felt immediately closer to her for it.

“I guess you come by it honestly, Finn,” Rey said over the ship’s comms, having listened in. “Are we following these guys or what?”

Rose scrambled up to the cockpit.

“Yeah! That's our escort, they're okay. They're going to hide the _Falcon_ for us,” she told Rey, plopping down in the copilot seat.

“Or they’re going to hide _us_.” Rey glanced at her. “It looked a little hairy out there. You all right?”

“Um. Maybe! Yeah. I think so,” Rose replied. “I’ll let you know when I wash my underwear.”

Both women laughed at that.

Back in the corridor, Poe caught Finn’s arm. “So, wait. Did you meet your mom? What’s the deal? Where are we going?”

Finn shook his head, but he was smiling, now. “She's not with them, but they're taking us to her! They thought we were here to rescue children with her, not to meet her. The woman in charge of them—I think she's in charge, anyway, she acts like it—she said my mother had never mentioned a son.”

His smile wavered a little uncertainly at this last statement—perhaps she'd found it too painful to mention a son she thought dead, but it seemed somewhat strange that she hadn't said anything at all to her allies. It seemed like it should have been relevant to carrying out a crusade to rescue children who had been kidnapped by the First Order.

Poe caught the falter in Finn’s resolve, and clasped him in a tight embrace. “Look, buddy. No sense worrying about what we don’t know yet. Things can only really go up from your mom being presumed dead, right? Even worst case scenario, you’re just back where you started, and we know we can survive that.”

He squeezed Finn’s shoulder. “I mean, okay, _worst case scenario_ , these radical nutjobs decide to kill us for no reason and we die in ignominy on a planet in permanent Death-Star-winter—hey, have we even checked radiation levels out there? Rey’s gonna be _pissed_ if either of us turns out to be sterile after this.”  

Finn chuckled a little at this. “Dr. K said it would be fine. I don't think we want to _live_ here, but for a few days or so there should be no harm done,” he answered, and slung an arm around Poe’s shoulder so he could pull him closer and kiss him.

It was a “thanks for not letting me get lost in my own head” kiss as much as anything, and it was interrupted by the _Falcon_ slowing, then stopping.

“Well that's...neat,” Rey said over the comms. “You guys should see this.”

Finn raised his eyebrows at Poe and they went to the cockpit to look out the front windows at— “Wait, how are we underground?” Finn asked.

They were, indeed, in a low, subterranean hangar of sorts, seemingly carved from the rocky desert, or else partially natural and partially expanded by the Jedhans.

“All the better to murder us,” Poe muttered, and then laughed at the glares he received. “I’m kidding, you guys. I’m sure it’s fine. Not creepy at all to live on a dead planet like this.”

“They’re only here because the First Order is here, Poe,” Rey reminded him.

“Also creepy,” Poe pointed out, as they made their way outside. They were met by a collection of beings, about half of which were human.

Poe walked down the ramp first, despite his earlier reservations—all the more reason he should go first—and held his hands out, exuding charm and swagger. “Hello there! I'm Admiral Poe Dameron of the Resistance and Republic Navies. We understand you're working on an operation against the First Order, and we'd like to offer—”

“He’s got a weapon,” someone said.

“Ah, yes,” Poe said, glancing down at the blaster on his hip, but raising his hands a little higher. “If you would rather I—”

“In his wrist,” said another voice, this one decidedly mechanical. “A cyborg.”

“Ah,” Poe began, but BB-8 zoomed around him to confront a protocol droid that was baked-earth red.

[You watch your tone, bub!] the astromech said, honking up at the droid that looked like C3PO, if his whole body had been red like his arm had briefly been, and if C3PO had ever held a blaster…

“Right! Sorry. Yes, I have a small knife in my mechno-hand, if you would like me to remove it…?” Poe wouldn’t call it a weapon, but then he wasn’t living on a shitty planet where you had to be scared of everyone and everything. “BB-8, I think we’re alright here…”

“Well, if the droid vouches for him,” the protocol droid said to her companions.

Finn marched down the gangplank to stand by Poe.

“Is there any chance we could maybe stop acting like we're about to fight any minute? We're here to help. You checked our identities, I spoke to your leader, she invited us to hide our ship here,” Finn said, having grown weary already of this insistence on treating them like the enemy.

They'd come here to find his mother, not to get into a fight with potential allies because one of them sneezed wrong or forgot they were carrying a pocket knife. If that was the direction this was going, he'd just as soon see his mother and get out of here, even if he did really want to help rescue the kids.

“Is that—FN-2187?!” came a shout from further back in the caves.

Poe and Rey bristled at the use of Finn’s old stormtrooper number, and looked to Finn as the man revealed himself. He was an older human, very tall, with dark skin and straight, dark hair that was turning gray at the temples. Poe didn’t recognize him from any Resistance intelligence, but if he knew Finn’s stormtrooper number, that could only mean one thing.

Poe and Rey each reached for their weapons.

But Finn held his hand out to stop them drawing them and straightened up to a confused version of attention—half Resistance and half First Order, as old, ingrained reactions asserted themselves.

“ _Captain_?” he asked of the older man, voice uncertain. He felt young again, younger than Deeks, only barely old enough to be a teenager, and Captain CD-0922, Captain Cardinal if it was a good day, was calling him from across the hangar.

Flustered, Finn wondered for a panicked second what he'd done wrong this time, and if the Captain would finally lose his patience with what he called Finn's ‘hero complex’—even though last time Finn had seen him, it had been the day he and his cohort were shipped off to real stormtrooper training. If he'd thought of him at all since then, Finn assumed he was either dead or still knocking battle sense into inexperienced young troopers and ignoring their adolescent shenanigans.

But here he was, older, much greyer, and looking like he carried the weight of entire decades.

“Uh—sir? What are you doing here?” Finn asked. Had the man had a change of heart? Or was this a desertion of convenience?

“Sir? Sir! Listen to this kid, I should be calling _you_ sir!” Cardinal pushed forward to shake Finn’s hand. “Heard a lot of good things about you, Eight-seven. You’re going by Finn, now, right? And a _Major_ , I heard—”

“Colonel,” Poe corrected, warily.

“Colonel!” Cardinal boomed. “And I heard you took care of Phasma _and_ Hux for me. I am going to have to find a whole new set of reasons to hate the First Order now.”

Still flabbergasted, Finn opened and shut his mouth several times before managing actual sounds.

“That shouldn't be difficult, since it's the First Order. But I don't understand. How are you _here_? What are you doing?” he finally asked, having shaken Cardinal's hand dumbly for longer than was really normal.

“Better yet, _who_ are you?” Rey asked sharply. Finn glanced over at her and shook his head like he was trying to shake reality back into order.

“He trained me,” he answered, which was not the best answer to give, because now Rey looked ready to murder the Captain, consequences be damned.

“Rey, _no_. He was the...least horrible of our instructors when we were younger,” he added hurriedly.

“Oh, thanks,” Cardinal chuckled, sounding not at all bothered.

“Captain, this is Rey. She's my wife, and a Jedi,” he said, then nodded to Poe and gave him a reassuring smile. “And Poe, my husband, a Rear Admiral and the best pilot in the Republic.” Finally, he indicated Rose, who was standing nearby trying to be invisible. “And Rose Tico, mechanical genius.”

He turned to the other three. “This is Captain—uh—” he started, but then paused, uncertain whether to use his old Captain's number or nickname.

“I go by Archex nowadays, in case it throws the Order off a little bit,” the man explained.

A spark went off in Poe's brain, an old personnel file he read back when he started working intelligence for General Organa before the war was even hot. “Oh! _Cardinal_! You helped Vi Moradi escape! She was a Resistance spy before I joined—so...you've been out for years? How come we haven't heard of you?”

“There are more pockets of Resistance in the galaxy than those run by the Skywalkers,” said a new voice, sounding a thousand years old, and a human woman with dark skin and shockingly red hair stepped out of a cave. Her age was unguessable—somewhere between Poe and Chewie. She wasn't especially remarkable, except her eyes were—

Oh, stars and skies, was this Finn's mother?


	3. Chapter 3

Finn whirled toward the source of the new voice and started in surprise, once again struck momentarily dumb.

Was his mother leading her own version of the Resistance, out here on this half-destroyed planet he'd barely heard of?  _ How _ had she come to be here?

What was he supposed to say to her now that she was standing right there just watching them with a sort of passive, distant interest? She looked just like she had in that mirror rock on Ahch-To, though her eyes and hands were a little more worn. Her voice was almost familiar from the vision he'd seen when they'd first found Sam and brought him home and given him a name. Her hands were the hands that had held him in that same vision. She was  _ right here _ , giving him a look that was impatient and curious at the same time.

“Well? What, have I grown an extra ear or another nose or something?” she asked him, and he realized he was very obviously gaping at her.

“Uh. No. Ma’am. Sorry,” he managed.

Not really the first words he'd been expecting to speak to his mother...

“Are you—” Poe began, seeing Finn had frozen up, but Cardinal—Archex—took her hand. 

“Sara has been my partner for a few years now. She has a history with the Empire, too. We're all outcasts here, you see, in one way or another. It's why we can't just walk in and join your Republic, gentlemen.”

Poe and Finn each opened their mouths, trying to figure out how to approach this diplomatically, when Rey marched down the ramp.

“Sara, we came here to speak with  _ you _ , actually. Could we do so privately?”

“We'll talk about the Republic and—anything else, whatever you need our help for—afterward,” Poe added.

“No good, no good,” Sara said, and for the first time they realized her voice was a little singsongy, almost a little...off. “Mission first.”

Finn let out a soft sigh as things rapidly veered far away from any prediction he'd had about how this would go. Archex and his mother were running their own small version of the Resistance, and Archex didn't sound excited to have anything to do with the actual Resistance or the Republic.

What if his mother felt the same way? The way Archex said  _ we _ …he seemed to think they would be unwelcome, which made Finn almost angry. How little did this man think of the Resistance that he'd blithely assume they wouldn't take either of them?

It felt like he was slighting the General and guarding his mother from him all at the same time, and Finn bristled—if only slightly. Rey merely glanced over at him, giving him room to speak, but his voice was still caught in his throat somewhere.

“Okay, your—friends—mentioned a mission,” Rey said, smoothing over the brittle silence after Sara’s statement.

“Hey,  _ hang on _ ,” Poe began, sensing Finn’s upset and wanting to get this talked out before they went on any mission, but he conversation proceeded as though he hadn’t spoken. 

“Yes! The mission. They have the children. Children! We must help them, while they can still be helped,” Sara answered. 

She dropped Archex’s hand and strode to stand very close to Rey, Poe, Finn, and Rose, where they stood within arm’s reach of each other. She gave them each a searching look in turn, pausing longest at Finn. He stopped breathing completely.

_ See me.  _ See  _ me. I'm your son, Sara, your son, I’m Sam, you  _ know _ me. Please know me _ , he thought at her, hard enough that Rey, feeling the desperation there, reached over to take his hand.

“You are...like Archex,” Sara announced, finally, and Finn let his breath out like he'd been punched. The disappointment must have shown on his face, for Sara added, as an afterthought, “Good man, Archex,” and patted Finn's shoulder. 

It seemed that she was trying to be comforting, but, like her words, there was something just slightly...wrong. Like she was sincere, but also separate, more of an observer than someone experiencing the moment. A little too shell-shocked. Finn wondered what had happened to her to make her like this, and didn’t like guessing.

“Like me, too,” she added, sounding almost lucid for a brief moment before she turned and strode first to Archex, then past him, gesturing for all of them to follow. The Jedhans followed promptly, but Poe, Rey, and Rose hesitated, keeping an eye on Finn. But Finn motioned them ahead and brought up the rear, trudging a little as he followed Rose.

He wasn't sure they should have come. How could he tell his mother who he was now? Was the moment gone? It was like when he first met Rey, letting her believe he was Resistance and then not having a chance to tell her until it seemed like a huge betrayal. Obviously, they got over that, but...

What if it upset his mother  _ further _ ? She didn’t seem all that stable. He hadn't been expecting a woman driven half-mad by her accumulated tragedies (or whatever had happened to Sara—this fragile woman would not have survived a day with the First Order, so something must have happened to make her the way she was, he thought). He wanted his mother to be happy—if that meant she never remembered having a son to lose or regain, he would give her that.

But Archex, maybe, could know. Finn would find a moment to tell him, at least. He was already kind of a strange father-figure, as close as Finn had ever had in the First Order, before Han, before Luke, and Lando, and Kix and Kes. 

He had enough father-figures. He wanted his  _ mother _ . 

They stopped walking so abruptly that Finn stepped on Rose, who squeaked and tried to avoid further trampling at the same time as she tried to right him from tripping over her feet.

“Here is our plan! Archex, tell them,” Sara announced, pointing to a sand surface on which were drawn maps and battle formations and tactics.

“Right,” Archex said, and with a pointer, began to scrawl his way through the Jedhan Resistance's plan to rescue the latest group of children who had been brought in on First Order freighters.

“They keep them here for several days before they are processed and taken to training, and should be quite eager for rescue,” Archex began. 

Finn gave a relieved sigh. When everyone looked at them, Finn finally spoke. “When we rescued the kids on Endor, they had already been through training. It was...challenging.”

It was easier now, he supposed, when he could pretend this was just another mission briefing, and that the woman watching them with a quick, far too-perceptive gaze was not his mother.

Archex raised his eyebrows.

“You rescued children? Why did we not hear?” Sara asked, suddenly, as if she'd caught them in a lie, and Finn started. The little grin on her face made him wonder if sitting quietly so she could interrupt with a pointed question and startle everyone was something she did for her own amusement. Her Jedhan colleagues seemed equal parts amused and exasperated about it.

“You didn't hear because the Ewoks adopted all of them. We kept it quiet so the Republic wouldn't try to uproot them—again. They're happy where they are, and cared-for, and they've been through enough without being sent to orphanages or distant relatives who don’t know how to deal with First Order-raised children,” Finn answered.

“Ha! Ewoks! Raising humans?” Sara asked in disbelief, and Finn bristled.

“Yes,  _ Ewoks _ . They are great warriors, and they understand the children better than most of us. They will teach them to balance humanity and soldiering. Maybe some will not want to grow up to fight, and they'll teach them to be healers or hunters or—or psytechs. Those kids will grow up to be  _ good _ people,” he said. He would not have anyone judging the Ewoks or the children, not even his mother, even though he desperately wanted her to  _ like _ him and wasn’t sure why he had snapped at her.

“It is unconventional. But...good, I think. Best for the children,” Sara responded, seeming not to notice that Finn was annoyed.

Archex stepped in, finally, seeing a chance, and pointed back to the map. He seemed proud of his map. 

“So...no Ewoks here. We’re interested in getting them out before we worry about where they go. That's it, in a nutshell. We go in in two groups. One finds the children, while the other slices into their system and cancels all requisition orders for as far out as they can.”

Rose nodded, here, already itching to cause some chaos.

“We meet back here, and take the tunnels back to the village,” Archex finished, circling a small collection of buildings in the sand while the others nodded. “Finn, your group will stay until their patrols have passed and we are sure you can leave without compromising our location, then you're free to stay or go as you wish. Any questions?” 

“ _ Several _ ,” Poe said, in battle-mode combined with bitchy-mode, because okay, yes, this mission was important, but his husband needed a family reunion and he wasn’t getting one—instead just more work, which he didn’t need. Also, even coming from a long tradition of guerrilla freedom-fighters, by his rather low standards Poe couldn’t help thinking of this gathering as barely a step up from a rabble. Most of them were old, many of them were sick (maybe this planet  _ was  _ going to render them sterile), and there were  _ not _ many of them. Thirty or so. Certainly not enough to go up against the five star destroyers’ worth of personnel the First Order had waiting in orbit around this smoking shithole of a half-planet. 

He cleared his throat: “I see the holding facility for the children, but how are we getting in, how are we subduing any guards, silencing alarms, disabling any fail-safes? How many kids are we looking at? How old are they? Do we have transports, or are we marching a bunch of babies across 8 kilometers of open terrain on foot? How aware are you of the star destroyers in orbit, and their air-to-surface weapons capability? The First Order would rather finish off this planet than risk their future soldiers being stolen from them—we’ve seen that firsthand. What’s the plan to get the kids off-planet? Where will you take them once they’re off-planet?”

The Jedhans stared at Poe like he had just declared himself the Queen of Naboo. Gods, when had he started thinking like an  _ Admiral _ ? 

Finn looked over at Poe and then glanced at Rey—when he caught her eyes, they both smiled at Poe's comprehensive list of questions, some of which their audience had apparently not considered.

Archex recovered first, and he at least had a few answers.

“We estimate roughly 400 children, but this could be closer to 300, or 500. The Order’s plan was not to bring infants here, last I was aware. Again, we cannot know for certain, but if they did not change their plans, none of the children should be much younger than 6. We will have speeders here,” he said, pointing to an area only a kilometer or so from the compound. “There is a system of dunes, here, with good cover, where they will wait for us.”

Archex paused, then, and looked around at the others as if to prompt them for further answers.

Finn frowned, not overly thrilled with where this seemed to be headed. Going in with this little of a plan was essentially a death wish. They had to know that, because they all looked grim and unhappy, but they also looked determined. Death wish or not, they were clearly going to do this.

But if they all died heroically, that wasn’t going to help the kids much. 

“Okay, how about we try to come up with something before we go, so that we stand a chance of getting both ourselves  _ and _ the kids out without dooming your planet to complete destruction?” Poe asked the uncomfortable silence.

“I knew the Force would provide!” Sara said, in a strange sing-songy voice. “I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me.” 

The other Jedhans repeated this phrase: “I am one with the Force, the Force is with me.” 

Poe looked bewildered, like they had literally just said they would solve their problems with magic, but Finn stepped forward, gesturing above him. “Do these caves go anywhere near the compound? How are you planning on getting 500 kids out of there on nothing but speeders?” he asked.

“What we need is a ground transport. Do we have any?” Rey asked. “Does the First Order have any?” 

The Jedhans shrugged.

“They are inside the compound. Heavy guard,” one of them explained—Rey thought she was the woman who'd met them at the  _ Falcon _ . “They fly only for taking or bringing children,” she added.

Rey frowned thoughtfully, but it wasn't clear what exactly she was thinking.

“So if we could get them to move the kids, and bring the transport down near the caves…” she ventured, then turned to Archex. “What would make them round up all the kids and move them? Would attacking with the  _ Falcon  _ and the speeders be enough to spook them into thinking the Resistance is after them?” she asked.

“No, you don't understand. The compound itself moves,” Sara said. 

Poe blinked, and sighed, like that solved everything. “Why didn’t you tell us that in the first place?” 

“Okay, then I think we have a plan,” Finn said.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sometimes when we skip a week, it means you get a longer chapter

“10-4, copy that, roger, over,” Finn heard over his comm. 

“Eighty-six that, roger roger, over and out,” came the answering giggle. 

Finn sighed and shouted across the  _ Falcon  _ at Rey and Rose, who had no respect for military protocol: “Can we cut the chatter, please?” 

“Just passing the time, Colonel Sweetheart,” Rey responded.

“You forgot to say ‘over’!” Rose complained. 

“ _ You guys are in the same ship _ ,” Finn whispered to himself, sounding harangued, though muffled by the transparisteel dome around the  _ Falcon's  _ ventral gun. From here, he could see the speeders as they kept pace closer to the ground, grim-faced Jedhans piloting them with a skill that spoke of experience dodging sand dunes and the strange little rock pillars that reared occasionally out of the earth.

“The transport is on the sensors. Exactly where they said it’d be,” Rey reported. Finn switched his comm channel to broadcast down to the closest speeder—Archex was driving that one, and would signal the rest of them.

“We have the transport. Everything set?” he asked, and after receiving an affirmative, gave the signal for the speeders to peel off.

“Ready, Finn? We're gonna come in hot,” Rey said, and immediately they crested the top of a dune into the cloud of TIEs that guarded the big transport.

The response was surprisingly fast as pilots whirled to meet them and Finn started firing on them. From around the other side of the transport, there was more firing and chaos as the speeder pack barreled into firing range with shoulder cannons and started harrying their own half of the guard ships.

“I can't believe I'm flying a T-65, this is amazing!” Poe whooped from his “squadron” of (only five) starfighters, as they flew higher up and picked off the TIE escorts before they could call for backup or escape to the Star Destroyers in the atmosphere. 

There was a bright zigzag of fighters and speeders, and when the dust cleared, the Resistance had taken some losses, but no TIEs remained. Sara gave him a thumbs-up from her speeder, and Poe in his X-wing peeled off. 

“Okay, speeders, we are all clear up here. Get inside that transport,” Poe ordered. “Rey, drop your payload, I'll cover you. Finn, Rose, you guys be careful down there.”

“Got it,” Rey said, and maneuvered slowly down, while Finn and Rose unhooked themselves from their gunner harnesses. 

“Time to hurry, I've got multiple bogeys on scanners, looks like they sent reinforcements,” Poe alerted them.

“Hurrying! I'll take point, Rose. You follow,” Finn said as he met up with Rose at the  _ Falcon _ 's ramp. 

He hit the button to open the door as Rey hovered as low to the ground as the ship could manage without cutting engines or engaging the landing struts.

“Pretty impressive, Rey,” Finn called up to her over the comms as he ran down the ramp, Rose on his heels, and hopped about three feet to the ground. “We're clear, go help Poe!” 

They crouched to avoid the sand that was being kicked up by the  _ Falcon _ 's engines. Once Rey had pulled away, Finn and Rose made their way toward the transport, a huge, sluggish thing that traveled low to the ground. Finn jogged under it and found one of the access hatches right where Archex had told him it should be. He climbed up the ladder and reached back to give Rose a hand, but she was already scrambling up after him.

“Ready?” he asked her, and she grinned.

“To replace all their requisitions for weapons with orders for boxes of bouncy balls? Every day,” she answered, putting on a cheerful attitude that belied how scared she was.

“Okay...but first, maybe slice into their systems and get this giant thing turned around the right way,” Finn suggested.

“Oh yeah. Ready for that too, boss,” she reassured him. Finn scrambled up the rest of the way and lifted the hatch, climbing in once he was certain no one was waiting for them. “Though I'm not sure how I got stuck dealing with the kids part of this mission...I don't even like kids!”

“How do you not—” Finn wondered, but their comms crackled to life again. 

“It's getting hot out here!”

“Peel off! Speeders, disappear. Meet at the rendezvous,” they heard Poe order. “No way they're letting the  _ Millennium Falcon _ and an X-wing get away. We'll keep em busy, Colonel.”

“May the Force be with us,” Finn said, and then, after a moment. “Wait, Rose, so what's this about you not liking babies?”

Rose laughed. “Ugh, they smell, and they talk back, and they're not cute like animals!”

“I mean, that makes sense, I guess, and, like, to each their own or whatever...but how can you not like  _ babies _ ?” It sounded crazy to Finn, but at least he had a mission to focus on to distract him. “So will any terminal do, or do we need to find you a specific one?”

Rose hummed. “As long as it's hooked on to the rest of the ship, I guess any of 'em should work.” 

“Great, because there should be one right through—here,” Finn said, stopping suddenly at a nondescript door that looked at awful lot like a maintenance closet. He moved aside, covering them, so Rose could remove a panel and slice them in.

It took her seconds to open the low-security door (it was, in fact, a maintenance closet, with a computer rigged into the ship’s environmental controls), and once inside, she set immediately to slicing into the ship’s navigation system. 

This took longer, and Finn was growing impatient by the time Rose gave him a stern look that said  _ I wish you were a droid or a cute animal and not my superior officer _ and broke through the last of the coding security.

The ship groaned and very gently started moving—or so it felt to Finn, who turned to make sure it was Rose's doing.

“Now to distract them,” she said mildly, moving on to the requisitioning system. It had far fewer security measures, and she joyfully replaced every order for supplies with orders for bouncy balls, kazoos, and the little wicker finger traps her sister had once delighted in trapping her in. These would be obvious red flags if anyone bothered to look at the computers, and hopefully distract them from what was really going on, even if just for a few minutes.

It was very satisfying.

Above them, the battle raged on. 

“I need some help, here, Rey, I need some help!” Poe cried. “BB-8, see what you can do about those aft shields!” 

[I need to do something about  _ all  _ the shields!] the droid complained. 

“Poe, let me take the hits, I can barely shoot from here, anyway,” Rey said. “Stick closer!” 

“Did they at least follow us?” Poe cried, looping and jinking away from the hail of TIEs. 

“Poe, they hate  _ nothing  _ more than this ship.”

“I dunno, seems like they hate this random shitty old X-wing, too…” 

Static crackled through Finn’s comlink, startling him and Rose both. 

It was Archex: “Finn, the transport is almost in position. We’ll need the shields down before we can board.”

“On it!” Rose said, turning back to her console.

The shields, like the navigation, were well-secured, and it took what felt like an excruciatingly long time for her to get through. Every time she tried something and failed, the system—hopefully  _ just _ this station, and not all of them—locked itself down and uttered a horrible alarm tone that nearly scared her to death the first time it went off.

“Alright, that's totally unnecessary, stop it,” she scolded the third time this happened, keying in the override and starting again.

“Rose, how's it coming?” Finn asked, trying very hard to be patient, as he watched their position on his tracking system start to hover right over the rendezvous point—much further and they’d miss picking up the rest of the team. 

“They're shields, Colonel, not boxes of supplies or a glorified compass,” she answered, but she was almost in. One more step, this time, and—

“Son of a nerf!” Rose growled as the alarm went off again.

“ _ Rose— _ ” Finn started, and Rose glared at him.

“It's  _ fine _ ,” she told him, re-entered everything she'd done several times already, and paused before inputting the final keystrokes.

“Any time, you guys,” Rey said, sounding harried, and Rose screwed her eyes shut to execute what would hopefully be the final step to breaking the shields.

The workstation didn't start blaring, which was good.

But it did turn an eerie red, which was...less good, especially if the  _ Shield override, shields at 0 _ , warning would be visible now on other consoles.

“You're clear, but move quick. We'll meet you,” Finn said, while Rose put the workstation back the way she'd found it. She joined him at the door, where they listened for approaching footsteps and sighed when they heard none. They slipped from the closet and Rose followed Finn down the hall. 

Finn led them down quiet hallways, ducking into alcoves as patrols passed by at doubletime. Clearly, they knew something was up, but not quite what yet.  

“Psst. Ah, Colonel? Don’t we need to be  _ taking care _ of them before everyone gets here?” Rose demanded, as a squad of four jogged by them. 

“Not if we want to stay alive and undetected,” Finn answered after the four were out of earshot. “We're trying to surprise them, remember? And do you really want to be in a firefight?”

They were going to rendezvous with the other half of the team in the level with the children. That would be going into more crowded parts of the ship, but there wasn’t much choice. Also, this particular ship appeared to be running on only a little more than the bare minimum of personnel.

It made sense. After all, except for a few raids by a little band of Jedhans, they didn't have much to fear out here, where hardly anyone existed to hassle them.

And they were “just” guarding kids.

“Finn, we’re in position,” came Archex’s voice over the comms. “Deck 4, there’s a long section of berths.”

Yes, the children would likely be in there, Finn thought, as Rose pulled up a layout of the transport. He nodded. “Got it. We’ll meet you there.”

They were on the opposite side of the transport, however, so Finn didn’t expect to meet up with anyone until they rounded a corner and nearly ran smack into Sara—Finn and Rose both raised their weapons, and Rose shrieked, but they all recognized each other just in time. 

“What are you doing here? The kids are this way!” Finn snapped, impatient with this woman’s obviously dangerous mental instability. 

She was staring past them into the empty corridor. “I thought I felt—my son was this way. They took him from me, you know…” 

Finn blinked in surprise—she'd felt  _ him  _ here, she knew she had a son, this wasn't hopeless—but then Sara shook herself and refocused on him. It was like watching a switch flip, her stare going from troubled sadness to frustration as she waved her blaster at Rose and Finn with no regard for muzzle safety.

“Why are you just standing here? Move! That way. Children are that way,” she said, pulling Rose and Finn past her and pushing them the way they had already been going. When Finn looked to make sure she was following, she was right on their heels, apparently having forgotten that she'd been looking for her son.

“ _ Finn _ ,” Rose hissed pointedly. “When are you going to tell her?” 

Finn responded quietly, “Not right now. Kids first.”

Luckily, they were not far from the berths where the kids were being kept, and they arrived to find Archex and his small force in a standoff of sorts with two troopers who were standing square in the doorway. Archex was apparently trying to reason with them, but since everyone had their weapons drawn and their voices raised, it looked to be going badly.

Finn reached to grab Sara by the sleeve as she went to push past him and join the confrontation, but the movement was enough to distract the stormtroopers, who held their weapons with deadly aim at Archex and his second-in-command, even as they snarled at Finn, Rose, and Sara.

“Get back! We're warning you, you're not getting them without going through us,” one snapped. They were clearly on edge, and behind them, there were several tell-tale whimpers from the children, who were probably terrified and confused.

Finn blinked, instantly reading the situation. The stormtroopers were  _ protecting  _ the children, and he’d seen this before, in Timons.

“We’re not going to hurt them. We’re here to rescue them,” Finn said. 

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” Archex said, as all parties began to half-lower their weapons. “We want these children away from the First Order.” 

“We’ll take you, too, if you want to come with us,” Finn offered. 

Sara blinked at him, surprised, as the stormtroopers lowered their weapons and slowly removed their helmets. 

“You’re FN-2187.” 

Rose looked smug at the Jedhans’ surprise that Finn was so effective a negotiator. She leaned in to whisper to one of them, “He gets this a lot.” 

Finn gave the two stormtroopers an encouraging nod and eased his blaster down. The stormtroopers hesitantly stepped back into the room, causing a few children to flee back toward their tiny bunks. He didn't blame them for their alarm—one stranger was much like any other, probably, as far as they were concerned. But a few looked at him as if they were curious more than wary, and he crouched to their level.

“We're here to take you guys home,” he said, but while some of them perked up at this, others just looked confused.

“[Home? Kids go home?]” Rose asked, and several Jedhans offered what Finn assumed to be similar words in other languages. He wished Rey or Poe were here. 

If there were still some who didn't understand, they soon realized that whatever was happening was better than hiding, and a few brave children turned into a small crowd of them, all alert and watching the adults for direction.

“Alright then. Who speaks Basic?” Finn asked. 

Several small hands shot into the air. 

He grinned at them. “You have a special job, then. Can you make sure your friends who don't understand me come along and stay with us? Take care of them until we get you all somewhere safer?” 

There were some eager nods.

Finn stood and turned to the other adults, taking charge once again. “Let's get moving. Archex, you’re in the rear. Me and Rose will stay up here with our new friends.” 

The stormtroopers still looked nervous. 

“We—you’ll really—but if we’re caught and—” one of them began, but the other cut in:

“We won’t get caught. Look, what you’re trying to do is great, but there’s four more rooms of kids like this. If even one of the guards or crew sounds an alarm, they’ll Order 67 us.”

Finn raised an eyebrow. “You mean—”

“A self-destruct sequence built into all the First Order tech, designed to handle mutinies. They think we don’t know about it, but we do.” 

Rose actually laughed here, a little nervously and a little manically. “That’s—really stupid. Are we sure they’re that stupid?” 

Finn gave her a hard look, as if to say,  _ Explain _ . 

“Isn’t it obvious?” Rose said cheerfully. “That’s a pretty dangerous protocol to have on every ship if you have a  _ really good slicer _ . Alternatively, it’s a really  _ useless  _ protocol, if, again, you have a good slicer.”

“That's…somewhat less comforting than  _ no  _ self-destruct, but we’ll go with it,” Finn said, and motioned shown the hallway they were still standing in. 

“Lead the way,” he told the two stormtroopers, who gave Rose a long, considering look before they both shrugged and started walking.

The next room was strangely unguarded, and the stormtroopers had no trouble opening the door. The children were frightened, as the others had been, but Finn knelt and spoke to them, and once they saw the other children in the hall, he was able to convince them that he wasn't tricking them.

They had managed to get the horde of children bunched together in the hall and were about to continue when there was a shout from behind them, where Finn and Rose couldn’t get to.

“Stop there! Blast them!”

“ _ Go _ !” shouted Archex, and the children started screaming and running.  

“I need you to get me to a terminal, Finn!” Rose gasped, hanging on his arm, while several children hung on her arms. 

“Sound the alarm!” one of the stormtroopers behind them shouted. 

One of the troopers helping them stepped aside with Rose, as Finn was carried on ahead with the group. “Will this do?” 

Rose nodded, and got to work. “Perfect.”

The alarm did sound, but only briefly, as Rose sliced first into its system to shut it off. It was distracting and obnoxious, and she needed to concentrate.

Order 67 was proving a little harder to break, which made sense—it wasn't supposed to be sliceable. More concerning was its response to being done, because every time she tried, it knocked ten seconds off the timer.

She was a very good slicer, but  _ that _ made her nervous.

Finn was down the hall at the next room, herding children out, when Rose finally managed to shut down the Order 67 protocol. 

The countdown clock stopped running down and reset, and Rose took the extra time to lock anyone and everyone out so it couldn't be triggered again.

“How close were we?” Finn asked in her comlink. 

“Not close at all, no sweat!” she chirped, and turned off the comm.

The stormtrooper who had stayed with her give a shaky, relieved laugh. 

“Two seconds isn’t close in the Resistance, huh?” he said, before he tugged her elbow and they ran to rejoin the others.

“Let's not do that again,” Rose panted when she'd caught up with Finn. 

He looked at her and raised his eyebrows as he shifted a small child on his hip. 

She shrugged. “They made it a little harder to shut off than I expected. But I got it, it's fine! We should go.”

“Yes. We have one more room, and I have run out of arms,” Sara agreed as she joined them. She carried two children, and a third sat on her shoulders. Archex was with her, as of yet unburdened, but he took the child Finn was holding so his hands would be free.

“I thought you said they were all supposed to be older,” Finn said while they made their way to the last room. The children in the third room were just barely more than toddlers, maybe 4 or 5, and certainly not up for so much chaos. Most of them were being carried by the small rescue party or the oldest of the rescued kids.

“Yes, well, I did say I was only mostly certain,” Archex replied, sounding put-out, and Finn gave him a sympathetic smile.

Their momentum got them down three levels, though going down stairs with a school of children was a challenge, even if these children were half-stormtroopered already. 

“Maybe we can have Rey pick us up—” Rose began, as she, too, was forced to handle some of the children who were already tired. 

“Get down!” one of the Jedhans shouted, pushing Finn and Rose down as blaster fire arced over their heads from the top of the stairs. 

Screaming children answered, and everyone ducked for cover. 

“They must have been alerted on the second level!” Archex said. 

“We need to get out of here!” Rose said. 

“You, you, cover us,” Archex ordered some of his soldiers, who charged up the stairs. “Everyone else, follow me!” 

“Rey! Poe! Come in, we’ve got a problem down here!” Finn demanded into his comlink, but the reply came back full of what sounded like static at first, until Finn realized those were explosions. 

“We are a little busy up here, buddy, we—”

“They know we’re here, Poe,” Finn said, “the game is up, we need a pickup—”

“ _ Poe _ ,” Rey said, in that warning tone she had.

“Love, that wouldn’t be your...Force-voice, would it?” Finn asked. 

“...Like something bad is about to happen?” Poe added. 

“Yeah. Finn, the star destroyers are about to open fire—”

“On the planet?!” Finn and Poe yelped. 

“Wait, what?!” Rose broke in, having heard the conversation over her own comm. Finn grabbed her shoulder and pushed her along in front of him, since she seemed momentarily unable to panic and run at the same time.

“I guess it's their backup plan for making sure no one gets out of here...alive,” Finn answered, “We have to get off this thing before they blow it up!” 

Archex skidded to a stop and knelt down to pull open a door like the one Finn and Rose had used to board the flying compound. It was only a few meters to the ground, but the door small enough that only a few could go down at once. 

Finn jumped down without a second thought and motioned for Archex to start sending kids down to him. 

Above them, Poe and Rey’s comms crackled to life: “You know, you really just aren’t happy unless the odds are stacked against you, are you, Dameron? Or should I say, Damerons?”

Poe nearly choked. “ _ Terex _ ?!”  

“Oh, dear. Your wife didn’t tell you? Ah, well. Lots else to talk about, I suppose. Anyway, no speeches today, Damerons, just letting you know we have your comlink frequency, and your little slicer isn’t as neat as she thinks she is. We’ll be opening fire as soon as our cannons are hot.” 

“Terex, you son of a bitch,” Poe swore, hitting his console and turning towards open space. “Come on, Rey, I think I have an idea.” 

Rey wasn’t actually sure who thought of it first, but the First Order mutineers who cut the Supremacy in half sprang together to their minds across their bond. 

“A...lightspeed ram?” she asked, stunned.  _ Suicide _ . “Poe, there has to be another way!”

[Oh, no, not again!] BB-8 shrieked. 

Poe screwed his eyes shut as the two ships screamed toward the surface, tapping something out in binary to BB-8. [Open comms. Bluff.]

_ A bluff _ , Rey heard him think at her.  _ A very deadly game of chicken. _

_ Message received _ , she replied, loud in his head. _ Finn is not going to like this _ . 

On the planet's surface, Finn was trying to help children to the ground while following what was going on above him over comms. But the chaos was hard to follow, and he realized only too late what his spouses were planning.

He caught on somewhere around  _ lightspeed ram _ and froze, looking up as if he could see through the floating base.

“Guys? What the fuck, guys! Rey, Poe, answer me!” he shouted, feeling dread settle in his stomach as they ignored him and kept talking.

“We’ve got to time it just right. I think I can cut through two if you can cut through three,” Poe said, as he and BB-8 made the calculations. 

“Got it, R-2? Can we do that?” Rey asked. 

[Y’all are fucking nuts.]

“Don't do this, you can't do this,” Finn yelled ineffectively. The children he'd been helping shrunk away from him, their faces gone pale and scared—but he wasn't paying attention.

“ _ Stop!”  _ he shouted, the panic screeching along their bond, for all the good that did him. He felt them, barely, but lacked the concentration to hold onto them.

“Poe, jump to this heading,” Rey said, with an idea of her own, her hands on the hyperspace lever. “I love you.” 

“I know,” Poe said and they jumped. 

Finn gasped as the comms went quiet and silence pressed in all around. He couldn't hear anything, not the increasingly upset children or Archex shouting at him in confusion. Rose, on board above him, stared down at him with wide, disbelieving eyes.

“Rey?” he asked quietly into his comlink. “Poe?”

They couldn't have. They  _ wouldn't _ . They were  _ not allowed to do this to him. _

The silence stretched—it stretched everywhere. 

“Loves?”

“Finn!” Rose exclaimed from her scanner. “Finn, four of the star destroyers aren’t responding! They  _ jumped away _ !” 

“What?” Finn demanded, scrabbling out from behind the transport to look up into the sky, like he could see what was going on up there through the cloud cover. 

Rose jumped down to him as the rest of the Jedhans continued offloading the kids, and showed him her datapad console. “I think they were bluffing, Finn, and it worked! They—” 

“Yeeaaahhhoooooo!” crackled in all their comlinks, as Poe and Rey jumped back out of hyperspace on the other side of the remaining star destroyer, maneuvering back around to strafe their engines nicely. 

Terex, probably too busy screaming at his men for panicking and leaving him behind, stayed off the comms this time, and the single star destroyer and remaining TIEs returned fire. 

“Finn, we’ve bought you some time, get out of there!” Poe said, sounding breathless and exhilarated. 

“That was amazing!” Rey laughed, sounding giddy. “I can’t believe that worked!” 

Finn was nowhere near as amused as either of his spouses.

“What the fucking  _ hell _ were you thinking? You could have  _ died _ !” he growled at them, no longer scared but  _ definitely _ annoyed, and he didn't wait for an answer before he stomped back to help with the children. 

Only a few remained to help to the ground, and then Archex, Rose, and the others were jumping down to join Finn.

“We're all out, sir!” one of the two new stormtroopers shouted to him as they herded the children toward the entrance to the underground tunnels. He waited for the mass of small children to move past him into the tunnel and took up the rear-guard position until the last person had disappeared, then commed Rey and Poe.

“We're safe. Hurry up and get back down here,” he told Rey and Poe, and then stepped inside the tunnel and shut the heavy, reinforced door, just as the cube-shaped transport sailed over the top of them on its way. 

Now that they were alone, and in the dark, and ostensibly safe, many of the children began to cry. It might not have been that great a fraction of them, but there were enough children here that even a tenth of them crying was going to sound loud. 

“Here now, you’re alright,” Rose said, patting one on the head nervously, but the child flung his arms around her legs and bawled until she picked him up. She patted his back and looked around. “Okay, where now?” 

“Through here,” Archex said, carrying four little ones in his massive arms. “It’s a bit of a walk. Finn. You and Rose stay behind and check for stragglers, all right? We’ll meet your people coming back.”

Finn nodded and knelt to reassure a few of the more timid children, ones who were sniffling and wide-eyed and standing there looking lost. They reached up and took the hands that Archex's people offered, all except the little boy in Rose's arms. He took handfuls of her jacket and would not be removed, even when Rose's moss-hopper emerged from her pocket to chatter angrily at him.

“Whoa, there, big guy,” Rose said, putting the moss-hopper into a pocket that snapped shut, and started trudging along with a child crying on her shoulder as best she could.


	5. Chapter 5

Though they were safe for the moment, they had a ways to go, and Rose and Finn were a bit glad to be at the end of the pack, going more slowly.

“Finn,” Rose whispered, “I’m sure Poe and Rey knew what they were doing. They’re probably still doing fine up there, you know.”

Finn snorted. He was sure they were fine. He'd heard them whooping and hollering like a pair of children as they chased each other toward the planet's surface.

“They're ridiculous,” he grumbled. “I'm sure they're fine, if ‘possessed of the self-preservation instincts of particularly stupid porgs’ is a definition of fine.”

Rose chuckled under her breath at the fondness underlying just how _grouchy_ he sounded, and then she gasped as Sara suddenly appeared beside them.

“I had a husband who would do that,” she said, in that a distant, sing-songy way. “Would fly off in his X-wing to save the day, face down the whole Empire, and then—we were younger, then, you know.”

Rose and Finn looked at each other, not sure if they should be sad for her or a little weirded out.

“I should go...ah, I’ll be a little further up,” Rose offered, trying to let Finn get a moment alone with her.

“Yes, we should hurry. We’re being followed,” Sara said, matter-of-factly.

Finn was about to ask about Sara's husband—his father? a pilot?—but he was somewhat distracted by the news that they were being followed. Who Sara's husband was—who his father was—would have to wait until they were safe, and Finn sighed. He was becoming impatient.

“Uh, okay.” He motioned Rose to move ahead of them.

When he glanced behind them, however, he could see nothing. There weren't even any sounds coming from behind them, only the muffled shuffling of many feet up ahead. He wondered if she'd been mistaken, or if she meant they were being followed, like, generally, which he already knew. Who could even tell?

“So...we should stop them. From following?” he suggested, indicating the weapon in his hand. “Do you know how many there are?”

“Oh, a whole platoon,” she said pleasantly. “Hurry up, now, and take this one for me.”

Sara handed off a small child to Finn, who was already carrying two, but managed the third. “Keep going. I’ll catch up.”

Then she drew a lightsaber.

“Whoa! Damn!”

Finn stood there with his mouth hanging open like a fool as Sara's lightsaber— _his mother's lightsaber!_ —appeared rather suddenly in her hands. How had he not noticed she had a lightsaber before? It was the children who snapped him out of it as they whimpered and clung to him.

“Ooookay, we're okay,” he soothed, the children as much as himself, “this is fine.”

It was not fine, but because he couldn't fire a blaster when his arms were full, he turned and rushed after the caravan, calling for Rose to come help him so he could go back. Lightsaber or no, he wasn't leaving his mother to face a platoon of stormtroopers by herself.

Finn knew Terex wasn't an idiot: even one star destroyer and one ground transport half-full of stormtroopers technically outmatched the Jedhan rebels and two pilots in outdated starships. But he also knew Terex didn't underestimate him, or Poe, or Rey, so he wasn't going to make any further mistakes.

“We’re being followed,” Finn told Rose quickly as he handed the children off to her. She couldn’t carry them all, so they had to march, which meant slow going. “At least, Sara thinks we are. I’m going back to cover our rear.”

Rose looked rather like she’d rather be in the firefight than in charge of four children, three of whom were crying quietly and just covered in snot, but she nodded.

“You guys’ll be okay. Stay with Rose, got it? She’ll look after you.” Finn said, wiping their faces and nudging them along. “Hold hands. Don’t let go!”

He stood up and wheeled around, only to realize Sara was standing right behind him. He jumped.

“Can you block blaster bolts with a blaster?” she demanded.

They were alone, for the moment, though Finn did think he could now hear sounds further behind them down the tunnel. He wasn’t sure whether he hoped there really were stormtroopers following them, or if she really was crazy and imagining things.

“Uh. No? But I can shoot at the people _shooting_ the blasters,” he told her, unsure if she was merely asking a random question or if it was a suggestion that he should let her handle this. Because that...definitely wasn't happening. Even if she now looked very formidable and not at all frail or unstable with that lightsaber in her hand.

“You should have a lightsaber,” she suggested. “You remind me of my late husband. And _he_ had a lightsaber.” She wasn’t quite staring at him, like she wasn’t quite accustomed to staring at people when she spoke to them—it reminded Finn almost of the stormtroopers who just got out of the First Order and ‘hadn’t figured out how to people, yet,’ as Poe put it.

“Who was your husband?” Finn asked, trying to sound very casual about it, like this was the sort of situation he ran into all the time. “Was he a Jedi?”

He paused thoughtfully. “Wait. Are _you_ a Jedi?”

“ _Was_. Sort of. Not really,” she replied, and activated her lightsaber. It surprised him by being an actually lovely shade of magenta, which would have mesmerized Finn at any other time. “Here they come.”

They heard the stormtroopers before they saw them, and the order “Blast them!” came before the blaster bolts and lightsaber lit up the cave. Finn couldn’t see how many there were, but only about four or five at a time could fire on them, anyway.

They backed down the tunnel away from the bolts, Sara blocking and Finn shooting at any stormtrooper who came within range, but even with the light from the lightsaber and blasters, he was having trouble actually hitting anything. Eventually they would be pushed all the way back to the children, and Finn couldn't let that happen.

“Sara, get behind me,” he told his mother, taking her arm and pulling her back while he turned his blaster skyward and fired at the roof.

There was a crackling, snapping noise, and then a low rumble, and pieces of the roof started chipping off. Their pursuers shouted in alarm and paused in their firing, but Finn wasn't entirely satisfied. He kept firing and moving back until the entire roof caved in between the two parties, leaving stormtroopers on one side and himself and his mother, covered in dust, on the other.

“Come on, before they try to get through it,” he told Sara as he holstered his weapon and hurried after the caravan.

Sara considered him, impressed, or even vaguely amused. “That could have brought the whole cave down on our head. Are you going to tell me it's luck, or are you just good?”

Finn gave Sara a slightly nervous smile and shrugged. Honestly, he hadn’t actually considered that it might bring the _whole_ roof down. But he wasn't about to admit that, so, “Both?” he answered, “And there didn't really seem to be another option except dying there, so…”

“No other option?” she said, and in the blink of an eye the lightsaber was at Finns throat, and a wild look was in her eyes.

“Whoa, whoa, what?”

“Never do _anything_ out of desperation,” she said earnestly. “That leads to the dark side.”

She held Finn there for a moment or two, and then seemed to either grow bored or forget about him, and powered down and holstered her lightsaber before walking up a side tunnel.

“Whoops, wrong way!” she added, turning around once.

Finn followed quietly after Sara, a little afraid to say anything lest he aggravate her into threatening him with the lightsaber again. He'd lost track of where they were going after the third wrong turn, and in fact wondered if Sara actually knew where they were going, or if someone was going to have to come find and rescue them.

“Ah—Sara? Have you been down here before?” he asked finally, when his concerns about catching up with the others overrode his concerns about annoying Sara.

“Not my fault Archex won't take the shortcut through the labyrinth,” she said, keeping up a brisk pace, taking left, then right, then right again, until Finn was entirely lost.

“Shortcut? This is the _short_ way back? They had the children with them! How are they supposed to walk all that way?” Finn asked, somewhat horrified. _Small_ children! Small, tired, frightened children, and this place was literally a maze—if anyone fell behind, they'd be lost, and no one had had time to take a head count which meant they would never know.

Sara stopped to glare at him.

“This is less than the First Order would have demanded of them,” she said, and stepped out into a larger tunnel to wait. There were sounds of movement coming up it, and soon Archex appeared, His face brightening at the sight of them.

“Sara! How did you—?”

“Keep going,” she said, waving him forward. “We'll take the rear again.”

Archex nodded and continued moving, the rest of the group trailing after him. Some of the children were talking quietly among themselves, and some appeared to have come up with a game that involved hopping on one foot until they lost their balance and nearly took down those around them—but for the most part they seemed actually to be in better spirits than they had been.

Rose was still near the back of the group, though she was carrying a different child now, and on her shoulders rather than in her arms. She paused when she saw Finn and raised her eyebrows.

“Uh, how…?” she asked, pointing behind her, and then back at Finn.

“Sara knew a shortcut,” he answered, and nodded to the little girl riding on her shoulders. “You need a break?” he asked, but she shook her head just slightly.

“We're almost there anyway, Archex says. Of course, I think he also said that a half hour ago when someone asked, so we may have different definitions of ‘almost’,” she answered.

Finn laughed. Now that he thought about it, a good portion of his own parenting was learned from Archex, from all those years ago when he was Captain Cardinal.

They did make it back to the settlement, and Archex and a few others went back through the tunnels to check for stragglers while Sara, Finn, Rose, and the other Jedhans tended to the children, feeding and calming them—and counting them: three hundred twenty-two in all.

Only some of them spoke Basic. Finn had them form a line and give their names and home-planets, as much as they knew, to Rose, who recorded it. The Jedhans were able to speak to others in the smattering of languages they possessed among them, and the protocol droid helped translate where she could.

By the time Archex and the others returned, only about thirty children were unknowns. Finn was optimistic that with the full resources of the Resistance and the Republic, they would be able to find their families. But he was also tired, after such a long day, and he couldn't figure out where Sara had disappeared to. She hadn't gone with Archex to look for stragglers, and she wasn't with any of the groups of children—it was like she had melted back into the shadows.

The screeching groan of the _Falcon_ announced Poe and Rey’s arrival into all the chaos—and a solid thud, that, when Finn and Rose ran out to greet them, revealed one of the landing struts had been damaged in the fight. Rey and Poe both came tearing out of the _Falcon_ , which was smoking faintly, laughing and shouting, with BB-8 scolding behind them. The X-wing was nowhere to be seen.

“Well, we’ve bought us a few hours while they get their cannons fixed—” Rey began to explain, while Poe spluttered with manic laughter:

“That was a _really_ big gun!”

BB-8 rolled up to Finn and Rose entreatingly. [They’re maniacs. You have to stop them. We had to _eject_! Into open space! Full of TIE fighters!]

“No, no, we’re fine,” Poe said, trying to stop laughing and trying to quiet his droid.

“We fought off a star destroyer and its full complement!” Rey said, enthused, and wiping sweat from her brow. “Temporarily.”

“Right. Temporarily. We should go. I need to see—I have to apologize about that X-wing…”

Finn looked between his two spouses and BB-8, who was rocking anxiously, and gave a long, tired sigh. He crouched in front of BB-8 and laid a sympathetic hand on the droid's dome.

“They _are_ completely insane,” he agreed, and then stood.

“Neither of you are funny and that was not amusing,” he informed his two spouses, sounding as angry as he had earlier when he'd been talking to Rose.

“Hey, buddy,” Poe tried, going in for a hug, but Finn didn’t return it.

Rose tried to diffuse the situation by pointing out, “Also thank you for not letting them turn us into a crater. You too, Bee. That must have been some fancy flying!”

[It was. It’s a good thing I am amazing] BB-8 said, a little mollified thanks to Finn’s sympathy and Rose’s flattery.

“Finn, we’re sorry we worried you,” Rey said, like this was a big joke Finn should have been in on. “But you know we’d never actually do something like that! Hyperspace-ram a star destroyer! That can only work once.”

“Yeah, what kind of a moof-milker would think of doing a dumb thing like that?” Poe said, rolling his eyes nervously.

Finn glared, and Poe held up his hands.

“Hey. They’d’ve never believed me if I hadn’t already done it the once, right?”

“That's _kind of_ the point,” Finn grumbled, because that was exactly why _he'd_ believed for a moment that Poe and Rey had actually gone and done something stupid. “Look, just...please don't do that again. You're going to give BB-8 a nervous meltdown, not to mention _me_.”

“ _Hey_ ,” Poe said, squeezing Finn’s shoulders. “Buddy, you know you have my word I’m not doing that to you again.”

He glanced behind Finn.

“Anyway, you have more important things to do than be mad at me and Rey for fighting off five star destroyers for you,” he admonished, playfully. “Let’s go talk to your—ah, to Sara.”

“Me and Rey can start on repairs,” Rose offered, mainly to get off babysitting duty, and she and Rey went back to the _Falcon_ , arm in arm.

In the time since Rey and Poe had returned, Sara had reappeared. They found her wandering from group to group checking on children and adults alike, making sure everyone was settled and comfortable and had food and water. Finn couldn't hear what she murmured to the people who spoke to her, but he inched closer until she paused.

“Could we speak with you?” he asked when she noticed him and Poe standing there. She nodded toward a quiet area where no one had chosen to gather.

“Right,” Poe began, launching himself into diplomatic mode, which was a little more the gift of the gab than anything. “Thank you very much for the use of your X-wing, ma’am and believe me, that lady was a joy to fly. Unfortunately, she didn’t make it, but I’ll be glad to replace her with one of the newer models the New Republic has at our command. Have you flown a T-85? They are a _dream_ —”

Sara turned to Finn, interrupting Poe like what he was saying wasn't important. “Flyboys. Can't live with them, can't live without them.”

Poe glanced at Finn, unsure if he wanted him to keep going.

“Ah—” Poe tried again, but Sara took Finn's arm.

“You want to talk to me, don't you?”

“Yes, please.” Finn gave Sara a relieved smile and nodded, taking her arm and leading her apart from the others. Poe gave him a thumbs-up and an encouraging smile.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whups meant to post this yesterday...!

“That's...why we're here, actually,” Finn began. “To talk to you. Though I guess it was good we showed up anyway to help with the children, especially since we didn't know you'd been rescuing them, or that you were planning on rescuing more.”

Sara nodded uncertainly, and he soldiered on. Finn felt the air humming around him, feeling vaguely like he was going to faint, but determined to get this said. 

“We should probably send some of our forces out here to shut down their operation, you know, if your people will accept the help. This whole place seems like it's been overlooked, you know? We should be helping. The Resistance should be helping you.”

He paused for breath as she smiled in amusement.

“Yes, I agree. But that is not why you came here,” Sara prompted, on the edge of serious, like she was too afraid to think he was here for another reason. 

“That's not actually what I want to talk to you about,” he admitted, with a nervous laugh. 

“Can I ask you—ah, you said you had a husband, right? Did you ever have, um, kids?” he asked, watching for any indication from her that she remembered having said it before—or that she recalled having a child.

This instantly agitated her: Sara stiffened up and drew back, peering off into nothing like it was a memory she couldn’t quite see and was worried about trying to recall. “Maybe, maybe, maybe. Anything’s possible. I had a husband once. I don’t remember him much.”

She sat suddenly, and began to rock herself, gently. Finn knelt beside her, waiting. 

“I think we had a baby,” she ventured. Her gaze settled on him and sharpened. “Do you think we rescued my baby? Do you think he’s here?” 

She grabbed Finn’s shoulders at this, but looked past him at the crowd of children, like she could spot one in three hundred. Her pulse and breathing were fast, and a few small rocks around them began to tremble and raise off the ground. Finn eyed them nervously, wondering at what point in her panic they would become weapons. Is this what Rey and Poe felt like when he had his flashbacks?

“Oh, Force,” he cursed to himself. He'd barely even said a thing to her and already she seemed to be having some sort of anxiety attack—complete with lifting stones. So his mother was more than a little Force-sensitive…

“My baby is—here? Where is he?” she demanded, moving as if to stand, and a rock floated past Finn’s face, circling them and picking up momentum. 

“Sara,” he said, trying to get her attention. He put his hands over hers to snap her out of it, the way BB-8 snapped him out of his panic attacks by bumping into his shins. The small stones trembled and held still as Sara refocused on him.

“Your son would be older, remember? It's been longer than that. He would be grown by now. My age,” he told her, scrambling to find an explanation that she would understand.

“Older?” she asked warily. At least she was thinking about it, now. She narrowed her eyes. “How do you know?” 

Finn felt compelled, pushed even, into saying what he said next:

“He’s  _ me _ , Sara. I should have—do you understand?” 

The world seemed to slow, to narrow just to the two of them. 

“ _ I'm _ your son,” he told her, taking her hands and holding them in between his own. “I'm right here.”

He searched her face for recognition, but found only a slowly building terror.

“N-no,” she said, drawing back. The little rocks stopped trembling and dropped to the ground, one by one, as Sara started to cry. “Y-you can’t. He's gone. Died, probably. They killed him.”

She pulled her hands free and covered her face with them, rubbing her eyes. “No. He—he was gone, he must have—you  _ can’t  _ be—”

She stopped and made a noise of anguished frustration, beginning to sob. 

"That’s not right. I don’t remember. I don't remember my son…”

Finn reached for her arm to offer comfort, but she flinched away from him.

“What’s going on here?” Archex said, suddenly, standing protectively over Sara and putting a hand on her shoulder. 

Finn hadn't meant to make his mother cry, nor to distress her, and he dropped his hands, empty, to his sides. He thought about letting it go, just taking Poe and Rey and leaving, but 

“She's my mother, sir,” he said, voice soft. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders a little, not looking at his former Captain.

Archex stood stunned. 

“That's why we came here. One of the other ex-stormtroopers, she built a program to find the families of all the stormtroopers who made it out. I thought all mine were dead and lost, but then it found Sara,” he explained.

Sara still had her hands over her face, and Finn gave a long sigh. He'd been prepared for her to never want to see him again, but he hadn't been prepared to see her in tears because she couldn’t remember him.

“I didn't mean to upset her, I just—wanted to know her. I wanted her to know me, know I'm not dead. Maybe I hoped she'd want to come back with us, but really...I just want her to be happy,” he said miserably, and glanced up at Archex. “Even if it's not with me.:

“You're her  _ son _ ?” Archex asked, holding Sara with his other arm, his shock evident. “She mentioned a son, sometimes. Sometimes not. I never would have thought…” 

But perhaps realizing how little his shock helped Finn or Sara, he softened.

“It’s alright,” he said, though to Sara or Finn he couldn’t be sure. “There’s just—a lot about Sara’s past we don’t know.” 

He patted Sara on the shoulder, and left her to sit and rock while he pulled Finn aside. Briefly, he tried patting Finn's shoulder comfortingly, too, but it felt too strange to both of them, so he stopped. 

“We all have darkness behind us. I think she’s got more of it than even I. The Empire, the First Order, we’re not sure. She doesn’t remember. She has nightmares about Kylo Ren sometimes, and the boss. Snoke. Sometimes even the old Emperor.” 

Archex shuddered, and then he did grip Finn’s shoulder. “I don’t like to think about it. And neither does she. How do you know this is her?” 

“Timons’ search program found her,” Finn said, “We've been using the First Order records we recovered and the Republic's records to reunite ex-stormtroopers with their families. It uses—well, everything, really—pictures, DNA, news stories...I'm pretty sure it accesses security feeds—and it found her.” 

Sara was still rocking in distress.

“Also...Rey had a vision, back when we found Sam. She was in it,” he added.

“A Force vision?” Archex said, like he had no hope of understanding it. “I don't know…she doesn’t usually...”

_ Maybe that’s it _ , Finn thought desperately. 

“Let me try to reach her, with the Force,” Finn begged. 

Archex stepped back. “ _ You _ have it, too?” 

“Well. She  _ is  _ my mother. Actually, some things kind of make sense now,” Finn considered. “Just...let me try? Please?”

Archex nodded and stepped out of his way, and Finn gave him a grateful smile before going to Sara. He crouched next to her again and touched her hand to draw her attention.

“Sara? I think I can help. Will you let me help you, please?”

Sara kept rocking, but she looked up. She looked liked what Finn could become, if he let his fear take over. If what had happened to her—whatever it was—had happened to him. Finn could almost imagine himself like this, if he lost Rey and Poe and Sam, if his mind had been warped into forgetting large chunks of his past. 

Maybe she didn't want to remember? Maybe it wasn’t fair to ask her to. 

Finn shifted to sit down cross-legged, where it was more comfortable, and searched Sara's face for understanding.

“I think I can show you what happened when they took me from you, and what's happened since. But I don't want to make you hurt more. You don't have to, but I'm here, and I'll be here, if you want to try,” he said earnestly, unwilling to subject her to anything without some indication that it was what she  _ wanted _ , not just something she would passively put up with because she thought she had to.

“I—I want to remember,” she said, almost immediately, and stopped rocking. “Through the darkness there is joy. I can sense it. But there is...much darkness.”

She looked near tears, almost tired, and she laughed a little. “Why do you want to be related to  _ me _ ?”

Finn reached hesitantly for one of Sara's hands and held it between both of his.

“Why  _ wouldn't _ I want to be related to you? You loved me—and I know you tried to protect me! You've been out here helping people with no support from the Resistance or the Republic, and you're doing it anyway,” he said, and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. It didn't matter that she wasn't what he'd expected, or that this was all very different from the reunion he'd imagined. None of that  _ mattered.  _ He just wanted this to  _ work _ , to be able to give her back something she'd lost, and maybe get something that he had lost at the same time. 

He took a deep breath, like Rey did when she was getting ready to meditate, and wished desperately that he had any real idea what he was doing.

“Ready?” he asked her softly, and she nodded, bringing her other hand to rest on his so they each held one of the other’s hand between their own.

Finn closed his eyes and, a little nervously, felt for Sara the way he felt for Rey when he was trying to find her. He sensed Rey and Poe both, of course, nearby, and Sam, even, but more distant—but here there was an unfamiliar presence, too, and he reached for that one.

He didn't expect it to grab him quite so hard when he brushed against it, like her Force was clutching desperately at his, and he nearly broke away in shock before stopping himself. When he'd recovered from the initial shock, he realized Sara was waiting for him, closely controlled and very still, so he took a deep breath and let her see what he remembered.

The memory that had come to Rey—and through her to Finn and Poe—as a vision was hardest, and he shared it first. It was as heart-wrenching as he'd remembered, but now he could see, like it was clearer now, his mother’s red hair and her less clear death, and he found himself gripping Sara's hands hard, as much to support her as to be supported. He paused when it ended and sat with tears in his closed eyes, catching his breath. 

Sara was staring at him, and their fingers tingled where they touched. 

“T-that was not my husband,” she said, surprising herself with this revelation. 

Finn opened his eyes in surprise.

“It wasn't?” he asked, and she shook her head. 

“Not your father. Someone else. Not sure,” she told him, and closed her eyes again, so he did the same.

He shared one of the better memories he had of Archex, and skipped most of the First Order except for the events leading directly to when he'd met Poe, and then Rey. Skipped again, to a brief memory of Poe helping him walk again and Rey when she'd returned from finding Luke, a boloball match and two proposals, finding Sam and losing Poe, and then finding him again. He shared Phasma’s death and Hux’s, and marrying Rey and Poe under the Force tree. He especially shared the happiest memories he had, and the ones with Sam, a face Sara might recognize more readily than his own.

When he had reached memories of the trip here (sans his and Poe’s tryst on the speeder bike, his mother didn't need to know about that), he stopped and went still, Sara still a close presence. He breathed, feeling his emotions collect themselves after the acrobatics of the past several minutes.

He wasn't ready to use his voice yet, but he gave Sara’s hands another squeeze and cracked his eyes open slowly. His vision was all blurry, and he blinked away the remaining tears before refocusing on Sara.

“So you…” Sara began, her eyes looking a little clearer, even if they were brimmed with tears. She swallowed thickly, and squeezed his hands. “So you have had a good life.”

Finn nodded and gave Sara a slightly watery smile.

“Yeah, it's good—really good,” he answered. Then continued, unable to stop:

“I—it’s your choice, of course, but—if you were in it, I—um, I'd really like that. Not that you have to leave here, obviously—you're welcome to come with us if you want, though!—but I just...I don't want to lose you. I just  _ found _ you,” he said, stammering through what he was babbling like a nervous teenager. This mission had really been a strange voyage into feeling like a kid again, between Archex's unexpected presence and trying to find the right words to say to his mom.

Instead of answering, Sara pulled Finn into a hug.

He caught his breath in surprise when Sara put her arms around him and hugged him, and for a moment he didn't know what to do, afraid to move for fear of breaking the moment.

But he couldn't  _ not _ hug his mother back. He brought his arms up very carefully and wrapped them around her waist, the embrace as much supporting as being supported.

“I found you,” Finn said quietly, amazed, “I actually found you.”

“I almost don’t believe it. But the Force is telling me…” she trailed off, unsure how to put the feeling into words, or else possessed by knowledge and memory that she didn’t fully comprehend. “I do remember now. I had a child, and something terrible happened to take him from me. Maybe I thought he died, and in that pain  _ I rent the Force itself _ , allowing a new evil to rise.” 

She squeezed Finn’s hands. “If I could choose any man in the galaxy to be my son, I would choose you.”

Finn squeezed Sara's hands in return and then hugged her again, his joy bubbling over into a laugh, though when he smiled, tears squeezed down his cheeks. “Well, I guess you lucked out.” 

He stood, and helped Sara up after him. 

“Come on,” he said, beaming like the sun. “I want to introduce a few people to my mother.” 

…

“Admiral! Admiral!” Rose shouted, impatiently, and then, rank be damned, tried, “Poe!” 

“Yeah, what?” Poe called back. 

“If we need to get these people off the planet, we  _ kind of _ need ships to do it on!” Rose was busy jury rigging the thrusters on an old shuttle, and Rey was buried in the engine of a transport twice as old and three times as ugly as the  _ Falcon _ . 

“What?” 

Poe emerged holding two toddlers, with a third clinging to his leg. “I’m kind of busy!” 

Busy wondering how many of these poor things Rey and Finn would let him adopt, mostly. The one on his right hip wanted to be called “Evie” and the one on his left hip let him call her Gala. The fellow clinging to his leg had yet to say much of anything, but Poe was prepared to be patient. 

Rose blinked at him, and Rey climbed out of the engine. She regarded him for a moment before telling Rose, “Well, he’s much better with children than he is with mechanics, anyway.” 

Poe’s mouth hung open, too offended to dignify that with comment. Gala stuck her fingers in his mouth and giggled. 

[it’s true] BB-8 agreed, rolling out from under an old Y-wing. [When ‘we’ do any repairs,  _ I _ do all the hard work.]

Poe pressed his lips together, sure he had been summoned to be made fun of.

“Except on navigation panels, right?” Finn joked, having caught the tail end of the conversation, and he gave Poe a cheeky grin.

“At least  _ he  _ knows a hydrospanner from a hammer,” Rey teased.

“That was  _ one time _ !” Finn responded, aggrieved. “And it was a very stressful situation.”

Rey smiled and raised an eyebrow at him.

“So’re you here to help? We need to get a few more of these things flight-worthy, or else the Falcon is going to get really, really cramped,” she said.

“Actually, we're here to make some actual introductions,” Finn said brightly, taking Sara's hand and going to join Rey, Poe, Rose, and BB-8. 

“I want you all to meet my mother. Officially, I mean, I know we all introduced ourselves earlier, but—Sara—mom—this is Rey, my wife, and Poe, my husband, and this is Rose Tico, our friend. Down here is our droid, BB-8,” he said, nodding to each of them. Then he grinned. “And you guys—this is my mom.”

Poe, Rey, and Rose all released a tightness in their shoulders. So, Finn noted with relief, did Sara. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” Poe said, offering her a hand. 

She stared at it a bit like it was an alien, but she took it, finally, and smiled up at Poe. “I remember you! With the mechno hand! I remember...” 

“Ah,” Poe laughed a little nervously, since she thought long and hard, like she was remembering someone else that she hadn’t just met a few hours ago, but he was willing to go along with it. “Yes, ma’am. Poe Dameron. With the mechno-arm.”

Rey seemed to connect with her a bit better, perhaps just through the Force. “We’re all very happy to meet you, and to welcome you to our family.” 

“And Sam is back at home, but you can meet him, too, when we get back. He's our son—my clone, really. It's a long story,” Finn said, and Sara gave him a questioning look, but then seemed to lose her train of thought.

“That is good. You are a good family,” she said, and then smiled, looking a little less fierce as she added, in a gentler tone, “My family.”

Poe and Rey beamed, wrapping their arms around Finn. “We try,” Poe said. 

“We will speak later. Now, there is much to do. The Force has provided, and we must make the best of it,” she said, and gave Finn's hand a pat before drifting over to toward Rose.

“You know how to make them fly again,” she said, nodding to the other grounded vehicles. “I will help you. We must hurry. The First Order is regrouping. They will trap us if they can.”

“Uh, yes, yes, ma'am,” Rose said. “That is what we are trying to do.”

“What are we all standing around for?” Sara asked.

Everyone glared at Poe.

“ _ What _ ?”


	7. Chapter 7

Between them and the other Jedhans, they were able to fix six transports and a few fighters—or at least get them space-worthy. The Jedhans saw to assigning pilots and getting the children safely aboard the transports and the _Falcon_ , while Finn and Archex took rigged charges and went back into the tunnels, both to check for anyone who had been left behind and to set the charges to explode if anyone came after them.

“We should get those transports moving when the fighters are ready to cover them. We're nearly done here,” Finn said into his comm, speaking to the _Falcon_ , and Archex gave him a nod of verification. He held up the last three charges with a wolfish grin that reminded Finn a little of Rey.

“We have three more to set and then we'll be back,” Finn added.

A soft noise further back in the caves alerted them at the same time.

Archex looked at Finn. “Another kid?”

Finn frowned—how had a kid fallen behind?—and stepped toward the sound. He made his way cautiously closer as it grew a little louder and a lot clearer. As he turned to Archex to see if the other man was still close by, the sounds resolved into the shifting of rock and muffled voices.

Voicesmuffled through helmets.

“ _Those_ aren't kids!” Finn hissed, backing up quickly and dragging Archex after him. “If they get through, they'll set off one of the traps before we can get out!”

Finn set his last charge where he had paused with Archex, far quicker than caution demanded, and then motioned the man to go on ahead. The voices were getting nearer, scouts shouting, “Hostiles ahead!”

“Open fire!” came the answering order, and blaster bolts ricocheted off the walls.

“Get to your transport—” Archex shouted, and then shrieked, “What are you doing?!” as he realized Finn had veered away, _not_ in the direction of the transport.

Finn ignored him, listening intently for a sound he thought he'd heard before shots had been fired. It was a small sound, like a hiccup or a sudden catch of breath, and he followed a hunch (that he was willing to admit now was probably the Force) that said if _he_ were hiding, small and scared, it would be behind one of the ridges of rocks that crossed the tunnels, creating a veritable maze of tripping hazards.

Archex was still shouting at him and the enemy was still firing, and he ducked briefly behind a rock for cover before making his way forward, still listening.

“I heard something! Stop yelling!” Finn called back to Archex, and the man went silent mid-shout. Finn poked around another pile of rocks under the cover fire that Archex now laid down for him, but he found nothing. He turned to rejoin Archex when a shot glanced off the rock right next to his head, close enough for some of the shards to strike his cheek, and close enough to elicit a soft yelp of surprise from near his feet.

He peered closely at the shadows near his feet and was surprised to see a very small, very scared child crawling out from a hollow that he'd mistaken for nothing more than a shadow. She took one look at him and started wailing, then clung tightly to his neck when he scooped her up from the ground.

“ _Now_ hurry!” Finn called as he hurried back to Archex with the little girl still sobbing into his shoulder.

Archex covered him until they were both in the _Falcon_ , which took off before the ramp was up.

“Hang on to something!” Poe called from the cockpit, which explained their reckless acceleration.

“Finn! Ventral turret!” Rey shouted from the dorsal cannon, and Finn left Archex in charge of the screaming toddler. A few shots pinged off shields, and BB-8’s shrill scolding of Poe resulted in a few even more wild jinks.

There was a certain poetry to the three of them flying the _Falcon_ together—Poe piloting, with Rose and BB-8 copiloting, and Rey and Finn on cannons—that old fossil, so seamlessly. Whether she liked them, or whether it was the Force, they didn't like to guess. Two more star destroyers showed up, but it didn't matter to them.

“Jedhans, when you have your jumps programmed, go. We'll cover you,” Poe announced. “And we should have a few surprises of our own.”

From the ventral turret, Finn watched in brief glances as the Jedhan transports started jumping.

“Rey—” he started as he caught a glimpse of three TIEs on the tail of one transport, but the _Falcon_ was already flipping over to give Rey a clear shot.

Two of the ships exploded without any collateral damage, but the third slammed into the transport as it went careening through space.

“Finn! They've lost their hyperdrive!” Sara called over the comms once she could make sense of the yelling.

“They say to leave them,” she added, then yelled something back to them in Jedhan that seemed to be along the lines of ‘No way in hell.’

“Can we pick them up?” Finn asked over the _Falcon_ ’s private comm while his mother continued shouting at the limping transport.

“Uh, we may not need to?” Rose answered, and then cackled as ships appeared all around them and started firing on anything with a First Order insignia.

“Woohoo!” Poe shouted as the Republic Fleet came out of hyperspace, guns blazing, four battle cruisers strong.

“Hey, Admiral! Need a hand?” Deeks asked, his voice crackling loudly over the fleet-wide channel, “How come you didn't invite us to the—ow, hey!” he yelped.

Finn shook his head as Deeks’ X-Wing shot by overhead, followed by two TIE Fighters and Jess.

“ _This_ is why we don't get invited to parties, kid,” Jess told him dryly, her lack of concern somewhat at odds with how quickly she took out the younger pilot's pursuers.

“Protect the transports!” Poe ordered, and connected to a private channel with Admiral Holdo. “I know you're probably going to want to yell at me again, but we've got kids and civilians on these ships, Admiral. The Toydarian freighter  at 23-7-56 lost their hyperdrive.”

“We'll direct them in. Good work, Rear Admiral,” she said, surprising Poe into forgetting he was the one flying the ship—until Rose yelled at him.

“Sir? Hostiles?”

“Right,” Poe said, banking wide around to face the star destroyers, which were still spewing TIEs and cover fire, but were otherwise holding. “Admiral, Grand Marshal Terex is on the super-class there. Permission to engage once the transports are away?”

“Losses would be too great, Dameron. We've got what we came for.”

Poe looked behind him. The kids, yes, of course. But Finn's mother, Finn's Force-sensitive mother, was aboard, too. He got his growl out before opening the channel, though: “Copy that.”

“We have the freighter, Admiral Dameron,” Holdo announced. “Program your jump and we'll cover you.”

...

Finn felt the _Falcon_ make the jump to lightspeed and finally took a deep breath.

“Damage reports?” he asked through the ship-wide comm system as he pulled himself from the turret and headed for the cockpit.

“Well, we're still flying, so that's probably good news,” Rey laughed.

“Of course we're still flying,” Rose shouted from the cockpit, indignant.

“What about the others?” she asked, and then added when she met up with Finn on the way from her own turret, “That was some fancy shooting, Colonel Dameron.”

He grinned at her and threw his arm over her shoulders.

Poe strode by and squeezed them both. “We'll be in hyperspace for a few hours. I'm gonna go check on the kids. Maybe cook up some soup for our guests. Rose has the Conn.”

Poe, not so secretly, just wanted to hang out with the kids. A few of them were just coming around, looking a little more like kids and less like terrified zombies, and some soup was just what they needed. “How many we got on our ship? Let's get a headcount, BB-8.”

The little droid rocked back and forth as they talked to the _Falcon_ before giving a response.

[There are 48 children, plus six of you] they reported, and Finn whistled in surprise.

“That's a lot of soup,” he said, and then he pulled Poe into a one-armed side-hug and kissed his cheek.

“Think you'll need some help with that?” he asked. “Or—well, my mother and I could start trying to piece together who belongs on which planets...but it’s not a big deal...”

“Buddy.” Poe kissed Finn deeper. “You think I’m going to say anything except ‘go talk to your mom’? I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll go with you,” Rey offered, squeezing his hand. “I want to talk to her, too.”

“I think she was in the cargo bay,” Finn said, holding on to Rey’s hand and swinging it between them for several steps. He tapped the comlink that was still in his ear.

“Sar—uh—mom? Are you still in the cargo bay?” he asked, and there was a brief pause and muffled shuffling, as if Sara had set the comm aside and was picking it up.

“No. I thought I saw something, and now I’m in the floor,” she answered vaguely, followed by ominous clanking and rattling in the background. “It is alright.”

“Um. The floor? You mean like one of the hatches?” Finn responded in mild alarm. His mother didn't answer, but the clanking stopped.

“I haven’t damaged anything,” Sara told them.

Finn wasn’t entirely reassured. Rey looked at him with wide eyes and they walked faster.

The cargo bay was, of course, teeming with children of various ages, many of them doing normal children things, which was encouraging, except that normal children things meant that a good deal of them were crying.

Rey was very glad not to have found Sara taking any of the machines apart with all these children here. She wondered, idly, if her mental...issues meant she needed as much care and minding as the children.

“Hi, Sara,” she said cheerfully, leaving Finn and Archex to deal with the children, and crouching by the hatch Sara had found. “We're in hyperspace, now. Isn't that exciting?”

“Don't treat me like a youngling,” the woman snapped.

Okay, that answered that. Rey changed to her Jakku demeanor.

“Well, hopefully a youngling couldn’t have found a smuggling hatch quite so well,” Rey pointed out, suspicious for the first time that Sara had been on this vessel before. “Can I help you—?”

But Sara surprised her by Force-jumping straight up and out, and then adjusting her clothes.

“Is this your ship?” she asked, eyes boring into Rey, and ignoring Finn, like it was easier to just focus on one person.

“Well, Chewie’s and mine, yeah. We inherited her when Kylo Ren murdered her owner,” she answered. “You probably heard of him—Han Solo? Chewie would have come with us if we’d planned on a rescue operation.”

Rey stepped around the hatch to seal it before a child could fall into it and break something. The door practically disappeared when it was closed, which made it all the more unusual that Sara had found it at all. You almost had to know it was there to even see it, and it wasn’t exactly clear how to open it—it was a smuggler’s hatch, after all.

But now Sara was frowning deeply, as if if trying to remember something she didn’t exactly _want_ to remember. Rey wasn’t sure whether the sight of the hatch triggered something, or the name of Han Solo, or Chewie, or even Kylo Ren.

She really hoped it wasn’t the last one, and turned to Finn as he approached, hoping he would want to step in.

“Why don't we go on a walk around the ship? I think Archex has everything under control here, and then you'll know where everything is,” Finn suggested. He gave his mother a look of concern. She just looked— _tired_ , though not entirely the tired of too little sleep. She looked worn out, like the exhaustion went clear to her soul. Finn touched her shoulder lightly, unsure if his concern would be appreciated, but unable to resist expressing it.

“Maybe we could go see the cockpit first. The stars are pretty to watch from hyperspace, and it's very quiet,” he went on.

Sara looked almost nervous. “Quiet, yes. But not too quiet?”

“Just...normal quiet? There's nowhere on this ship that's silent,” Finn reassured her, offering his arm to her on one side and Rey on the other.

“This is familiar,” Sara said as they made their way to the cockpit, and Finn looked over at her while Rey paused, stopping all of them.

“You've been on the _Falcon_ before?” she confirmed.

“No. How could I?” Sara asked impatiently, but then followed it up with, “Long ago, perhaps.”

She looked around as if she was struggling to remember something and was instead becoming increasingly frustrated when she couldn't.

“The memories. They're not whole. Broken. Parts and pieces, not enough,” she mumbled.

Finn had heard similar complaints from stormtroopers—as much as a stormtrooper ever complained—both from his time in the First Order and from some of the ones they'd rescued. The fractured snatches of incomplete memory were almost always the result of reconditioning.

He recoiled slightly, as if he'd only just now seen Sara clearly. Of _course_ it made sense. The memory problems, the odd behavior, the worry about being where it was too quiet—it all fit. His mother wasn’t suffering from a mental illness or trauma.

His mother had been reconditioned.

Which meant the First Order had her, or captured her, at some point. No wonder she barely recognized him.

He turned to Rey, trying to communicate his concern to her.

She must have picked up on his thoughts, because Rey was looking at Sara more and more uncertainly. She always knew Finn was important to the Force, but if his mother recognized the _Falcon_ , bore a purple lightsaber, and had been reconditioned—and escaped the First Order ( _or was released by them?_ said a more sinister thought)—how important was _she_?


	8. Chapter 8

“Alright, who’s hungry?” Poe said, when Finn and Rey had returned to sit around the holochess table after wandering the ship. “This one’s from the Alderaanian side of the family, but not too spicy, you know, for the kids.” 

He walked over, holding out a spoonful with his hand cupped underneath. “Someone want to test it for me?” 

“Finn is more sensitive to spicy things than most children,” Rey said, lightly teasing, and he gave her an aggrieved frown—but he did accept a taste of the soup.

“Hmmmmm,” he said, and then managed a smile. “It's good, even for me. The kids will love it,” he assured Poe. Then he put his arms on the table and buried his face in them.

“How is my mother wielding a lightsaber and using the Force  _ and  _ suffering from reconditioning sickness?” he mumbled to both spouses. “Who  _ is _ she? Other than my mother. Where did she actually come from?”

“She seems to recognize this ship, so...smuggler?” Rey suggested. 

“Maybe Luke knew her?” Poe tried, and then burned himself and swore colorfully before applying bacta gel, which they kept in the galley as a rule. Then he laughed. “I...just put bacta gel on my mechno. Are you guys this tired, or is it just us Forceless mortals who need sleep?”

“Poe, everyone has the Force,” Rey reminded him tiredly, and got up to get out soup bowls. “Uh. We don't have enough bowls…”

“No, but we do have enough bread!” Poe said, apparently awake enough for a culinary challenge. He demonstrated pulling the middle out of a dense roll so he could ladle soup into it. “You guys want to start filing the kids through?”

“Yes, but—did you just make  _ edible bowls _ ?” Rey asked in delight, sneaking a bit of the spongy bread Poe had pulled from the center of one of the large rolls. “You’re a genius!” 

Poe waved his hand like it was nothing, though his smile grew smug as she kissed his cheek.

“I want to know how to make this bread, sometime,” she informed Poe, and then took Finn's hand to pull him after her.

“You just make bread...badly…” Poe whispered as they ran off.

“Okay, who's hungry?” Finn asked when they'd rounded up all the children, who immediately started moving around in an attempt to form a line.

Finn smiled at them, relieved that no one seemed so traumatized as to not want to eat, and helped Archex and Rey organize them into groups.

He sent them to the kitchen one group at a time, the youngest children first. Soon the buzz of excitement tapered into quiet as everyone concentrated on eating, though there was a brief second buzz of concern as they found their food had  _ flavor _ . 

Once all the children were settled, Finn fetched Rose, Archex, and his mother, and the adults huddled in the small kitchen to eat the last of the soup and bread bowls. BB-8, eager to help, remained in the cockpit to keep an eye on their progress toward home and monitor any communications from the other ships.

“So, all in all I'd say that's a good day,” Poe suggested, grinning wryly at the understatement. “Reunited a mother and son, and soon we'll reunite a lot more.”

He was looking around at all the children, wanting to take them all home and keep them while at the same time missing his own kid. 

Rey patted his knee fondly, and used the opportunity to steal some more of his bread. 

“And a lot of work for Finn, of course. Since he's in charge of our program to help former stormtroopers,” Rey explained to Sara and Archex. “Kix is gonna love you,” she added sarcastically to Finn.

“I'll just tell him I'm doing my part to make sure he doesn't get bored,” Finn replied, which made Rey laugh.

“Anyway, these kids will be easy compared to the older stormtroopers. Plus, we're bringing help,” he said, because Archex and Sara had made it clear that the children were their responsibility, still, too. Finn didn't think they'd want to be left out of reuniting them with their parents. Maybe it would help Sara, who still looked haunted and kept touching Finn's arm as if reassuring herself he was real.

“You can meet Sam—our son, and Kes will love to meet you. Poe’s whole family probably would, if you want to meet them,” Finn told Sara, trying not to pressure her by sounding too eager.

Sara patted his arm again. “I think I would like that.”

…

“Ah. Colonel, didn't you go to find  _ one _ person?” Kix asked when they met him in the hangar after landing. Finn avoided looking at Rey, who was giving him a “told you so” look, and then smiled sheepishly at Kix.

“We found her...also?” he said, moving to introduce his mother. “This is Sara. Mother, this is Commander Kix.”

“It's a pleasure to meet you, ma’am. You debrief in meeting room seven. I'm sure the General is eager to meet you, as well,” Kix said, which answered Finn's unspoken question about whether he was supposed to bring her with them.

They kept the General waiting only long enough to ensure that Kix and Archex were introduced and that Archex and the other Jedhans were alright helping Kix process the children and get them places to stay and people to look after them. The hangar was already buzzing with activity when they left, as the children realized they were not only safe, but also hungry, tired, and a million other things that they now announced at volume to anyone who was listening. 

Rose had already found somewhere to be, but Rey was glad to stay and help, carrying two of the smaller children on her back. 

“Okay, I’ll be right back,” Poe told her with a quick kiss. “We’ll be right back. Don’t decide to adopt any without me.” He leaned in to whisper, “We need some girls, right?”

Rey laughed and shoved him.  

“No more than seven!” Poe called, following Finn down to the debriefing room. “Eight, tops!” 

[You called?] BB-8 asked, bumping Poe’s shins. [I’m prepared with data about the success of our mission!]

They both knew who that was for: Holdo, who seemed to challenge every move Poe made as a Rear Admiral, especially now that she was no longer vice but  _ full  _ Admiral of the combined Republic and Resistance fleets. “Thanks, buddy. Glad you’re on my side.” 

“Did you get the final count of how many we brought back?” Finn asked BB-8, thinking to lead with that information.

[Yes, friend-Finn! They are all accounted for!] the little droid chirped. They raced ahead to the door and rolled against it eagerly, announcing to the General and anyone else inside, [We have located friend-Finn's mother!]

“Bee! Relax, buddy, volume!” Finn laughed.

BB-8 did lower their volume slightly, but the moment Leia opened the door, they forgot about being quiet.

[We found her! Friend-Finn has a mother!] they told the General, who laughed and looked past BB-8 toward Poe, Finn, and Sara.

Poe saw Leia freeze, almost imperceptibly. He might not have noticed, except Sara seemed to tense up all at once, as well. It almost looked like they  _ recognized  _ each other, but that would be…crazy, wouldn’t it? 

“Well, let’s get this meeting over with, so that we can welcome you properly,” was all she said, evenly, after hardly a pause. 

Sara sat, pressing her lips together as she stared at Leia. 

Finn, slightly taken aback by the sudden shift in both Leia and Sara, looked between the two of them and then over at Poe. What was going on here? And why was it going over their heads?

“Ah. Right,” Poe said, eager to get this debrief underway, at least to cover for the awkwardness.

The debrief was fairly standard, possibly because Holdo wasn’t there, and she and Poe didn’t have a chance to get into an altercation. They told Leia what had happened from start to finish, and she asked questions where she wanted more clarity. Mostly, she focused on caring for the children and getting them home, which they could assure her Kix was already working on, and she wanted to know that the Jedhan refugees were also being cared for by the Republic, and invited to join their cause, since they could always use good allies.  

“Good,” Leia said, and stood up like she was going to conclude the meeting. “Everyone out except Finn and his...mother.” 

Poe gaped, mouth flapping. This felt very much like a big thing was about to happen without him. “M-me? But, don’t you—ah, Finn? You want me to go?” 

Finn didn't, really, but he wasn't about to gainsay Leia, either. He took Poe’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

“If someone doesn't watch Rey, we might end up with ten small children,” he joked, “We'll catch up as soon as we can.”

Poe glanced furtively around at the three of them. “Yeah, okay. Ten might be a bit much.”

When he was gone, Leia hit the table with both fists, eyes flashing. “Mara, we thought you were  _ dead _ .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's not a typo. Scream at us in the Comments! ;)


	9. Chapter 9

Sara moved as if to stand in her own defense, but then paused as if questioning her reaction. Finn looked to her in alarm, his own instinct to protect her warring with the common sense that said Leia, even angry, was no threat to him or anyone good in the galaxy.

But that didn't explain what was going on, and Finn almost wished Poe _had_ stayed, because Poe was far better at reading social situations than he would ever be, and he might have made sense of this. Maybe he would have known who Leia was talking about, because the only Mara Finn knew about had been an elite assassin in the days of the Empire, until she defected and joined forces with—

_Oh._

“Wait. hang on,” Finn said, confused enough to drop any sort of formality. “I don’t understand. You think my mother is _Mara Jade_ ? Like the one from _Luke Skywalker Adventures_?”

That was impossible! Finn had heard stories, even in the First Order, about the woman who served as one of the Emperor's Hands. There was no way _that_ woman could be the same one who stood next to him with one hand clasped trembling in his.

Leia’s gaze said that this was possible, and Finn realized that she actually looked as freaked out as he felt—or what passed for freaked out for Leia, with the face of a diplomat. If he saw any emotion from her, it was either calculated or too genuine to fake.

Sara was still and quiet, except that she was shaking. She looked like she was concentrating, but like she was concentrating on being terrified. Finally, she said, “I-I don't—know.”

“Hey, it's alright. You don't have to. You have a home with us, no matter what,” Finn tried to reassure her.

Sara nodded, but it was distracted, like she wasn’t really listening.

Finn turned to Leia instead, searching her face for any indication of what she thought of this. But her expression still gave nothing away as she looked from Finn to Sara and back again.

“But—” Finn tried when their eyes met. “How do _you_ know—?”

Finn really was going to finish that sentence before his brain shut down, overloaded by the answer his brain supplied for itself:

Leia knew her because Mara Jade was—or had been—married to her brother. Rey had told him about Luke’s wife, though the only thing Rey had unhelpfully mentioned was her striking red hair.

Finn had been, for the past few hours, trying to tell himself that Archex would be an okay step-father-figure, if he could ever work through the whole First Order officer thing, but the math didn’t work out for him to have been his birth father, no matter how hard he tried.

Which meant...was Luke Skywalker his father?

“Oh,” Finn said.

Leia now had her eyes on Finn.

“Why didn’t I sense anything? Why didn’t _he_?” she said to herself but looking at Finn—her _nephew_ , Finn?—and then turned to Mara. “Is he Luke’s son?”

“Luke?” Sara asked, like she was worried about remembering. “Who is Luke?”

“No, no way. How could I—? No,” Finn said, because he was _really_ in denial. It was too strange, far too strange—he couldn't believe this. It was impossible!

Except Leia was now giving him a _deeply_ unimpressed look, so probably it wasn't as impossible as he thought. 

“Mara, you don’t _remember_?” Leia asked, and began to regard her more warily, like she didn’t quite trust her. She reached out, however, and offered Mara a hand. “I’m sorry. I want to help. What do you remember?”

Mara paused, but looked heartened when she turned to Finn. “I remember...my son, now, but there are holes. Too many holes, too many shadows. I can't reach them...”

Finn reached over and took her hand to reassure her. She offered him a shaky smile before she returned her unblinking, almost wary gaze to Leia.

“Do you remember me?” Leia asked.

“Everyone in the galaxy knows who you are,” Mara responded, a bit of spark returning. “Should I…?”

If Finn didn’t know any better, he would have thought Leia actually looked vaguely hurt by that.

“Let’s go see my brother,” she said abruptly.

…

Luke was tended only by a bored medidroid when they filed into his room, all three of them, and he was as still and pale as when Finn had last seen him back on Ahch-To. Finn turned to Leia as she went to stand by her brother’s bed. She rested her hand on his wrist, but there was no response.

“How is he?” Finn asked the medidroid, while Sara stepped past him to peer curiously at Luke.

“He's stable,” Leia assured him, holding up a hand to forestall the droid. “Harter said he seems perfectly healthy, except—well.”

She was quiet for several long moments, her shoulders slightly bowed, face drawn and worried.

“He's probably trying to teach me a lesson for getting shot and scaring him,” she joked, but it fell flat and she hurried on. She supposed it served her right, for being in a coma when Luke had come back that time—but it had been weeks. This was getting a little excessive, even for Luke. “Mara? Ah, Sara? Do you...remember? Anything?” she asked instead, hopefully.

Finn stared at the man on the bed, about as catatonic as his mother was.

 _Luke_ might be his _father_. Luke, who had taught Rey to use the Force, who had saved her from Kylo Ren and Snoke, who had saved _all_ of them from Mortis. Luke who had explained—Finn blushed at the memory—what a Force bond was, after it was too late. Luke, the search for whom had brought them all together in the first place.

_His...father?_

Couldn’t they run a DNA test or something, and skip all this suspense? Hadn’t they run DNA tests, already, through Timons’ system? He was going to double-check her records, personally, and figure out what went wrong.

Even if Luke wasn’t his biological father, at the very least Luke was his mother’s husband at one point, as important to her then as Archex was now (and was that going to be weird now?).

Finn watched his mother, looking for some sign that she knew Luke, or else was certain she didn't. Instead, he saw that same look of thoughtful confusion that suggested she _might_ know him, which was...unhelpful.

Finn was about to give up, about to say something, when Mara reached out and touched Luke's hand.

There was almost a visible spark, but seen only through the Force, and Mara tensed and her eyes opened wide with fear—or, realization. 

“NO!” she screamed, and fell to her knees beside the bed, in sudden hysterics, like the touch had burned her, or else—she saw something no one else had. “Luke! Luke, what happened?! Come back!”

When Mara screamed, it startled Finn, and there was a clatter from down the hall in Kalonia’s office.

“Sara—Mara— _mom_ ,” Finn said, dropping next to her and taking her hands. “He isn't going anywhere,” he tried to explain, but Mara was inconsolable. She shook her hands free and took Luke's again.

“Luke! Luke, come back!” she cried, “Where did you go? I…”

She paused, her vision clearing, and Finn put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice quiet and earnest, tears constricting her throat. “You have to come back, Luke. I remember.”

“ _What_ is going on in here?” Dr. Kalonia asked suddenly from the doorway.

“I remember. I _remember_ ,” she insisted, clutching Finn’s arms, and crying. “But not you. Are you my son? Or are you one of the children we…”

She trained her eyes on Leia again: “Where is Ben?”

Leia’s mouth tightened, her eyes betraying an emotional panic. “I—he is…”

Finn had never seen her stumble like that before.

“I have to go,” she finally said, and left, nearly bowling over Rey and Poe who stood in the door.

“Hey, is everything alright?” Poe demanded, looking torn between wanting to go after Leia and concerned about Sara. He and Rey communicated silently, and both nodded at once—Poe going after Leia and Rey kneeling with Finn beside Sara.

“What’s going on?” Rey asked.

Dr. Kalonia was already readying a hypo. “Sara, they told me you might be confused. I’m going to give you something to calm you down…”

“My name is Mara!” she shouted, making everything in the room that wasn’t nailed down tremble with the Force.

“Mara?” Rey asked, and looked between her and Luke, and gasped. “Not Mara _Jade—_?”

“Mara Jade,” Finn's mother repeated. She seemed not to notice the hypo that Kalonia administered, though she did relax her death-grip on Finn's arms and let him guide her to her feet and to a chair. Dr. Kalonia gave the three of them a look before leaning against the wall. She was not about to leave until she was certain that no one else was going to have a meltdown.

“I don't remember you,” Mara told Finn, finally, in a voice that was sleepy and unfocused, and very sad, “But I believe you are my son.”

She looked from Luke to Finn as if trying to fit the puzzle pieces together.

“I remember Luke and the children. I remember—” she paused to reach for Luke's hand and stared in evident confusion at his face.

“I remember they died.”

“ _Okay_ ,” Dr. Kalonia began, “I'm afraid that for the safety of my patients, I'm going to have to get you your own room, Mara. Come along.”

A droid appeared with a bed, and Dr. Kalonia moved Mara gently but irresistibly onto it.

“No, no, Luke, I need to—”

“There is a lot you need to do, yes,” Dr. Kalonia said. “But Master Skywalker is not going anywhere. Maybe you can tell us what you have begun to remember? And we can…fill you in on some things you might have missed?”

She looked to Finn for support.

It took Finn a moment to find his own voice. This was all happening too fast. He decided to try for distraction, having gone from wanting to know everything now to not wanting to know anything, ever.

“I can tell you more about what it's like here, and Rey can tell you about training with Luke? You don't have to be alone unless you want to,” Finn said, lamely, and since a droid was rolling the bed out of Luke's room and to another one, Finn walked with them. He didn't miss the brief expression of distress as the door shut and they lost sight of Luke.

“He won't go anywhere. I promise,” Finn assured his mother, and maybe she believed him, or else she was too tired to be anxious as they settled her in her own room.

A droid followed them in, bearing tea, to Finn’s amusement, but Dr. Kalonia seemed to have expected it and handed Finn, Rey, and Mara each a steaming mug before sitting. Finn realized she was doing all of this to make Mara more comfortable, to make this feel less strange.

When she motioned for him to sit as well, with a slightly imperious look that left no room for debate, he realized maybe she was doing it for him, too.

“So—what do you remember, Mara?” Rey ventured, very interested in how this woman was related to both her husband and her master. She added hastily, with a glance at Dr. Kalonia, “No rush. Just, as it comes to you. It might help to get it out. You meditated with Finn, before. Would you like to meditate again?”

Mara took her hand, and squeezed it. “I see a lot of Luke’s influence in you.”

Rey smiled, shaking her head in bewilderment. _Finn_ was Luke’s son, not her. And now that she thought about it— “There is a lot of Luke in your son, too. His kindness, gentleness. His desire to help people, to always think the best of people…”

Mara smiled, and Finn found himself the center of attention from all three women. He gave them a self-conscious smile.

“Even the First Order couldn't take that from you,” Mara said to him, and he shook his head.

“I used to get in trouble for watching out for the others… I was very stubborn,” he said.

To his surprise, Mara laughed.

“ _That_ , you would get from both sides. Luke...he has always been stubborn, even if he's quiet about it. I remember he was very insistent about his school, what he would teach them and how and why,” Mara said.

Rey thought about this, because Luke had never seemed especially stubborn to her—certainly not like she was—but it made a kind of sense, actually, what Mara Jade said. Luke had a very quiet way of sticking to lessons until they were learned, even if it took days and days, without Rey ever noticing that was what he was doing. “He _is_ . He _does_ do that! He still does it.”

Finn blinked away tears. “So, ah... so you taught with Luke?”

Mara nodded. “I taught the arts of—defense. War. Luke didn’t like me to call it that, but—I _was_ the Emperor’s Hand, so I was good at it.”

“You remember that, too?” Finn winced. He knew a lot about the Emperor’s Hand, and her betrayal. It was part of his education as a stormtrooper, a chapter of the glory of the Empire. He realized now how funny it was that they had never shown them any images of her face…

“I do. I do not like to, but I turned away from that life…” then Mara’s face clouded. “I think. Several times...”

Before Finn or Rey could press on this, Poe entered, shuffling awkwardly in the doorway, with a faraway look in his eyes, like he had absorbed too much information too quickly.

_“General—General,” Poe called, running after her. If he didn’t know better, she looked like she was on the verge of tears, but that would be crazy… “Leia!”_

_She stopped, wheeling back around to face Poe, her face a mask of rage and sadness that made Poe actually draw back._

_“I can’t!” she hissed._

_Poe blinked in bewilderment, and then looked around them. Leia looked on the edge of a breakdown, and she couldn’t have it here, not where people could see, so he ducked them into a side room and pulled her into a hug._

_And Leia broke down into tears. “Oh, gods, Poe, I thought she was—we thought she was dead, and I—_ forgot _about her.”_

_Poe rubbed her back, feeling bad that he mostly only felt honored that she was trusting him with actual, real, Leia-kriffing-Organa-Solo tears. “Hey. Hey, you thought she was gone, it’s not your—”_

_“No. I completely forgot she ever existed until now!” Leia screamed. “What made me do that? Why would I_ —? _What—”_

_Poe, bewildered, tried gripping her shoulders. She looked like a person he had never seen before, her face a wreck with emotion. He threw out the first idea that came to him, anything to make her stop being so upset. “W-was it some—ahh, some Force thing? Was it—”_

_“I forgot her when Ben turned. Poe, she was_ there _, and then she wasn’t. We didn’t find her body. At first, I think I—” She was shaking, too choked with emotion to go on. Poe helped her into a chair. “I thought she had disappeared with Luke, and then I must have—I realized, or got close to realizing, and I—Poe, I made myself forget about her.”_

_Poe braced himself. What else could he do? “Leia, you can do that? Why? Why would you?”_

_“Because I figured out she left_ with _Kylo Ren.”_

Rey reached out a hand for him, and Poe stepped toward her, but gingerly, glancing nervously at Mara, like she was a bomb that could explode.

“Hey, so, how’re we doing?” he asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

“We're okay,” Finn said, but there was uncertainty in the tone of his voice. “How are you?”

 _Was Leia okay?_ he thought. Why did Poe look so timid?

“Would you like some tea, Rear Admiral Dameron?” Dr. Kalonia asked, because someone had to rescue this suddenly awkward situation.

“Ahh, sure,” Poe said, taking some, and not drinking it.

“Was—is Leia alright?” Mara asked, suddenly intensely lucid.

“Ah. Yeah,” Poe lied, gesturing vaguely. “She had to—a—meeting.”

“It was something I did,” Mara ventured, worriedly. “Something I don’t remember doing.”

Finn shifted his mug to one hand so he could take one of Mara's.

“Mom. Do you remember how you and Luke got separated?” he asked gently.

Mara Jade sighed wearily. “Which time?”


	10. Chapter 10

“Okay,” Rey said, pinching her brow as they drove home, exhausted, since it was well after dark, and several cycles since they last slept. They had left Mara in Medical, under observation, for the night, and Kix and his team were still sorting through the rescued children. There wasn’t anything more they could do, so they were taking a speeder home to sleep and see their son and their father. 

“Okay,” Poe agreed, letting BB-8 help him drive only because he was so tired. 

“Okay, let me get this straight. Your mother is Mara Jade. Mara Jade Skywalker,” Rey began. 

“Right,” Finn said, staring out the window uneasily. 

“And no one—not even Luke—knew she ever had a son. In my vision, she was visiting her family, so when the First Order came for the children on that planet, they captured her, as well,” she continued. 

“I...guess?” 

“And they reconditioned her before she escaped, or was sent her back to work with Luke,” Rey said. 

Poe finished: “Leia thinks she was sent back and that Snoke was able to get to Ben through her.” 

They were quiet after that.

“...And when Kylo Ren went to the First Order, he took her with him,” Finn said after awhile. 

“Or she went willingly,” Poe said, looking a little green. That explained why Leia had responded the way she had, with tears and fear.

“But she doesn't remember, so…” Rey ventured.

Finn finished for her: “So they must have reconditioned her. Again.”

It was no wonder her memory was such a disjointed mess, if she'd been reconditioned twice—or who knew how many times, because they had no way of accounting for the time she'd spent in First Order hands.

Finn wondered if they had ever let her out of where they'd kept her, and if their paths had ever crossed with neither of them the wiser, when they were both in the Order.

“How are we gonna be sure she's not…ah...” Poe began, but Finn turned sharply toward him. Poe was cowed into not finishing his question, and Rey didn’t ask it, either, though they were clearly both thinking it. 

“What? Working for them?” Finn demanded angrily, exhaustion and confusion and too many other stresses to name threatening to boil over. “Why would she be working for them anymore? She helped all those kids  _ escape _ . She helped us blow up their transport! She can barely remember to eat, and she can hardly control her own powers...” 

“Finn,” Rey said, and she put a hand on his leg to draw his attention back to her. He glared at her. 

They were accusing his  _ mother _ (who had already been through reconditioning—twice!—and the Force only knew what else) of being a...a spy, or something.

[ _ I _ don’t think she’s a spy, Friend-Finn] BB-8 honked, throwing them further under the proverbial hoverbus. 

“No one thinks she'd be doing it willingly, or even consciously,” Rey continued.

“I won't let anyone think that,” Finn blurted out, cutting her off. “We can't do that to her again.”

“Of course not,” Poe said hastily. “I’m just saying things are complicated now. Whenever Leia and— _ Mara _ —” he still stumbled over that name, the name of a mythical figure, for all he knew, “—can talk, I’m sure they’ll figure some things out. But it’s good to have her back, either way, of course. She’ll get to meet Sam and be reunited with Luke, whenever he wakes up and you’ve got your mom back and—all good things.” 

When they pulled up to the house, the light was on coming from the kitchen, and Poe wrinkled his brow. “Did Dad know we were getting in today? Or—does he have a  _ date  _ over?” 

“Maybe someone told him we were headed back?” Finn ventured. He hoped it wasn't that Kes had a date over. Any other day it wouldn't have mattered, and he probably would have been thrilled—both that Kes was meeting new people and to witness Poe’s horrified reaction—but he was  _ tired _ . He wanted to  _ sleep. _

They walked in, Poe in the lead, to discover that Kes had four strapping young humans over for dinner. Not his usual dates, Poe thought. Kes wasn’t the polyamorously inclined one in the family. “Uh. Hi?”

Kes jumped up. “Oh! You're home!”

The guests sitting at the table looked worried, the kind of worried you got if a celebrity barged into your house when you'd taken your shoes off, and even before Finn recognized them, Poe and Rey had a pretty good idea who they were when they snapped to attention.

“Uh—at...ease?” Finn asked, as startled by the newcomers as they were by him.

Sure, Kes had been making comments about needing more help with the farm than his family could provide, but these people didn't have the look of farm hands about them. They looked like soldiers, haircuts regulation short, faces far too inexpressive—not just any soldiers, then.

“Ah,” Finn said out loud as this line of reasoning caught up with him. He knew there was a program in the works for finding gainful employment for stormtroopers so they could learn skills that weren't fighting and spend some time around people who weren't soldiers—but he didn’t know it was already enacted!

He wasn't entirely sure he'd expected them to end up in Kes’ home, but maybe it wasn't that surprising. The Damerons had a thing about strays. 

“Kids! You’ve got to meet the new hired help!” Kes exclaimed, all thrilled animation, and they knew they weren’t getting to sleep any time soon. “I can’t believe I had to hear about this from Colonel Kix—they just started Primeday. I’ve got them set up in your room, and I’ve been showing them—”

“Uh, sorry, what?” Poe blinked. “ _ Our _ room…?”

“Just kidding. Bunkhouse is all fixed up!”

Finn had to smile at Kes’ enthusiasm for welcoming these ex-stormtroopers into his home, even if it seemed to startle them more than anything. He hoped they weren't planning on staying this nervous, but...they were also here because they needed extra help adjusting to life outside the First Order.

“Alright, everyone come, sit, I'll introduce you. Sam is fine, hija, he went to sleep hours ago,” he added to Rey, who looked like she might sneak off to check on her son.

“This is Finn, Rey, and Poe—Poe is my son,” Kes said to the ex-stormtroopers, “Aaand you probably all knew that anyway.”

He chuckled at himself and shook his head before continuing.

“And these are Oren, Luka, Flash, and Zero,” he told them, and each ex-trooper stepped forward to shake hands and peer curiously at the people whose names and faces they recognized, but whom they otherwise didn't know.

Finn did his best to look something other than tired.

“Dad,” Poe said, because he was tired and his filters were down, “I thought we couldn’t afford—”

“Government subsidized, boy, haven’t you been paying attention?” Kes laughed. “Apparently they take extra work, but so far I’ve never met harder workers, nor sweeter—”

“We won’t be any trouble, sir,” one of the stormtroopers said firmly—Luka, maybe. 

“You will if you keep calling me ‘sir!’” Kes laughed. 

“He hasn’t been called that since the army,” Poe told them, realizing now how callous what he had said before sounded. “Or when I’m in trouble, you know.” 

He extended a hand. “You can call me Poe. And I should be thanking you for helping my old man out like this. It’s really—” Poe turned to his father, “are we gonna plant a new orchard?”

“Maybe we will! First, we're going to get the harvest in and these kids are going to learn how to take care of the animals,” Kes answered.

“I like the chickens the most,” Finn told them, since they looked nervous.

“What he means is that he really likes one chicken the best because she's his pet chicken,” Rey told them.

Finn frowned.

“He named her ‘Chicken’, and she likes to follow him around,” Rey added gleefully. The ex-stormtroopers shared a dubious look and one—Flash?—mouthed a confused “pet chicken?” to one of the others that Finn ignored.

“It's just funny, sir, to think the famous FN-2187 has a pet chicken,” the youngest-looking among them, Zero, said with a shy giggle. 

“Oh, that's nothing. Wait til you see Rear Admiral Dameron’s toy starship collection—”

“Excuse you, those are  _ antique models _ !” Poe exclaimed.

“—And the Jedi Rey’s flower garden—”

A stormtrooper raised her hand. “Actually, that sounds about right for a Jedi…”

Rey laughed. “Well, ‘Jedi’ isn't quite the right term, anyway.”

“And they're not toys! I have a Red-5 in mint condition, dad, that will pay for Sam's Academy tuition!”

Kes laughed, waving a hand. “Alright, mijo, I was only teasing. Have you eaten? I just put the food away but I can heat it up…”

Rey would still probably always choose food over sleep, and immediately raided the conservator for these leftovers, but Poe shook his head. “Nah, I'm beat. But, uh, Finn? You want to share your big news, or wait ‘til morning?”

Finn would have been happy enough to wait, but now that big news had been mentioned, he had a very captivated audience that he didn't have the heart to disappoint.

“Oh. Well, we found my mom. She came back with us, and she's at the base right now. Doctor Kalonia is keeping an eye on her for tonight,” he told Kes, and his father-in-law's face broke into a broad smile.

“Your mother! That's wonderful, Finn! How is she? What is she like?” he asked, nearly forgetting his guests in his eagerness to usher Finn to a seat at the table.

“It's… Kind of a long story,” Finn answered. Had Kes known Mara Jade? And if he had, would he hate her for what she'd done when she was younger?

Kes squeezed Finn’s shoulder, sensing that this was too complicated, perhaps, for people who weren’t quite part of the family yet. “Okay, well, you all look beat. You can tell me in the morning, okay? I’ll take our new friends down to the bunkhouse and get them settled in.” 

His gaze seemed to say,  _ If you’re still here when I get back, I’ll know you want to talk _ .

Rey nodded and waved at the workers, her cheeks already full of her late dinner. Poe and Finn shook hands with each of them, warmly, and then they were alone. 

Poe sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ll go check on the kid…” 

...

In the bunkhouse next door, which was pretty much a fully furnished building, Kes flicked on the light. He’d set the space up beforehand, made all the beds, set out toiletries and other amenities for their new guests, even though he knew they would be coming with military-issued gear. 

“Okay, Luka and Zero in this room, Oren and Flash in here. I don’t know how they did things in the First Order, but here we do boys and girls in separate bunks,” Kes said, taking them through the space, which was large enough to accomodate more, and practically palatial compared to what they were used to. “Shared head in the middle, so you’ll have to work out your own rotation, and keep it clean. You come up to the house for breakfast—how’s 0700 sound?”

The ex-stormtroopers didn't seem to know how to respond for a moment, but finally managed several murmured “yes, sir”s and subsequent apologies when Kes scolded them again for the formality.

...

In the house, Finn went to join Poe, though he paused to kiss Rey’s hair and accept a bite of her leftovers before he went. He found his husband leaning on the edge of Sam's cradle to watch him sleep.

“He's out, huh?” Finn asked very quietly.

“Yeah,” Poe said, wistfully. “I'm jealous.”

Then he kept staring at Sam, and Finn was about to say something when Poe continued: “Do you suppose we've had Sam longer than your mother knew you? That's a horrible thought. We haven't had him that long, even. Not long enough.”

“Yeah, probably we have. His birthday is in a few weeks, and I think I was less than a year old when they took me,” Finn answered. 

He shook his head and reached out to touch Sam gently on the arm, unafraid of waking him. Once Sam was asleep, he could sleep through almost anything.

“I can't even imagine how she must have felt,” Finn admitted softly. The thought of someone taking Sam both terrified and enraged him, and he took a deep breath. It wasn't going to happen, not with Sam here, safe on Yavin.

“Yeah—” Poe said, turning around to pull Finn into his arms, but he froze halfway there. “Wait, shit, his birthday is in a few  _ weeks _ ?!” 

He pulled Finn outside and shut the door so he could whisper-shout without waking the baby, and he checked the chronometer for the date. “Oh my gods, I’m the worst father ever. His first birthday, and I’m not even prepared!” 

“What are you two shouting about?” Rey asked, stepping into the hall with them, and trying to usher them up to their room after she took her own peak in at Sam. 

“Sammy’s birthday is coming!” Poe cried, kissing them both. “We’re gonna have a huge party!” 

“Great!” Rey and Finn said together. “What do we do at a baby’s birthday party?” 

“ _ Okay _ ,” Poe said, taking their hands and leading them upstairs. “There’s some home holos we need to watch right now, no matter how tired we are or how ugly I was as a baby.” 

Rey laughed at this.

“You were not an ugly baby,” she told Poe. Babies, while occasionally a little odd-looking, had really never struck Rey as  _ ugly _ . Maybe they weren't all as cute as Sam, but she still liked them.

“Are these the embarrassing ones your dad always talks about?” Finn teased as he closed the bedroom door quietly behind them. “Because I've really been looking forward to that one of you falling face-first out of your baby pool.”

“No. We’re not watching that one. I mean, we  _ can _ , but I don’t get what’s so funny about a two-year old with balance issues. Bet you make fun of people who only have one hand, too?” Poe teased. 

“I do, actually, all the time,” Rey said, kissing him. 

“ _ I _ don’t,” Finn said, trying to one-up his wife, kissing Poe as well. 

“That’s why you’re the best,” Poe laughed. “But I have vids of my first birthday. Me shoving cake into my mouth and everything. My mom’s in it, actually. It’s pretty cute. I think dad watches it, sometimes, when he misses her, or misses when I was too small to misbehave.”

Finn had a hard time believing that Poe was ever too small to get up to mischief, but he supposed there wasn't a  _ lot _ of trouble a child who had yet to really master walking could get into.

“I think we should watch it in bed with all the pillows and blankets,” Rey announced, and started rearranging the bed while Poe and BB-8 worked on the holo and Finn tried to resist the temptation to burrow into Rey's pillow pile and accidentally fall asleep. It had, after all, been a  _ long _ day.

When she finished, Rey flopped down onto the bed and reached a hand out to draw Finn into the middle of the nest she'd arranged, where she and Poe could both curl up next to him.

The holo wasn’t long, cut together poorly, and recorded pretty badly. It was kind of hard for Poe to watch old holos of his mom without crying, but it was fun seeing the rest of his family thirty-some years younger. 

Rey and Finn thought Poe was actually adorable, with chubby cheeks and a mop of curly hair, and eyebrows that were very dark and expressive, giving him a deeply suspicious look when he frowned. That was nothing, of course, compared to the main event—him stuffing a huge piece of cake in his mouth with his hands, until he was covered in frosting. Rey laughed, and Finn smiled. 

“So anyway, we gotta do that for Sam,” Poe explained, turning it off and ushering BB-8 over to his charging port for the night. “No, BB-8, no one needs to see the part where they hose me off!”

Finn scoffed.

“No, we  _ definitely _ need to see that,” he said, but BB-8 had already settled down in their charging port and gave him a muted little honk. “Maybe not right now.”

Rey laughed and welcomed Poe back into bed with a kiss. Finn snuggled down between them and sighed.

“Party planning may have to wait for tomorrow,” Rey said as she scratched his arm and he blinked slowly, looking like he'd been hypnotized.

She looked over at Poe and they shared a smile at Finn's sudden and complete stillness. If Rey paid attention, she could almost feel him relaxing, and when she kissed him softly he hummed and opened his eyes—which hadn't even realized he'd closed.

“Shame,” Poe said. “I was kinda hoping to suck his—”

“I think he’d appreciate it more in the morning,” Rey said. “Might help him to relax.” 

“Ha.  _ Maybe _ ,” Poe said. He leaned over and kissed Rey hungrily, though he was tired, too. 

Rey kissed him back, just as hungrily, but now that she was in bed, warm and content next to Finn and Poe, she was sleepy, too. She stifled a yawn when she and Poe broke for air and then grinned.

“Maybe we would all get more enjoyment out of this in the morning,” she suggested. At the moment, staying right where she was and going to sleep with her head on Finn's chest and her arm thrown across his belly to rest on Poe's side sounded like a far preferable plan to sex.

Finn nodded and leaned up for a kiss from Poe.

“I'm with her,” he voted in a sleepy mumble. 

“It’s fine, it’s fine, don’t take advantage of me while I’m still young and eager and able to be taken advantage of,” Poe grumbled, and promptly fell asleep. 


	11. Chapter 11

The next morning, Finn, Rey, and Poe arrived back on base to find Sara—Mara, now—talking with Archex. They supposed the two of them had a lot to talk about, and Finn was grateful for the other man, he really was, though he was also a little jealous.  _ He  _ should be there with his mother—they had even brought Sam!—but Poe and Rey, perhaps wisely, pulled him away. 

They assured him they would come back, and they took him to where the young almost-stormtroopers played with the other children. The expanded childcare facility on base now accommodated the younger ex-stormtroopers, with lessons and playtime as befitted their age groups. 

“They’re so special,” Jonorai, now director of the branch who took care of the children, said fondly, watching Finn being swarmed by children of all ages who wanted to climb all over him. “A joy to teach sometimes, and a challenge. Many of them are traumatized, of course, but slowly coming out of it. All of them are wonderful.” 

“That’s great,” Poe beamed. He was feeding Sam, otherwise he would have been out there with Finn. “And we’re finding their parents, too, right? Some of them?” 

“That’s the Colonel’s job, but yes, they’ve been hard at work already finding families for the children--either parents or relatives, or else families looking to adopt. Evie and Gala’s parents were the first to arrive.” 

Poe frowned, though he could hardly begrudge families getting their children back. There would always be plenty more to adopt, once the dust settled. 

“We should throw them a party,” Poe said. “Hey, maybe we could invite them all to Sammy’s birthday party. A huge party out on the farm. Is that crazy?” 

He turned to his wife, hopeful.

“It's completely insane,” Rey said, but struggled to even say it with a straight face, and then she laughed, “But no crazier than inviting the entire Resistance to our wedding.”

She leaned over to kiss Poe on the cheek and then gently disentangled her hair from her son's grasp after he grabbed at it. Sam shifted his attention to trying to grab at the spoon Poe was feeding him with, and then at the food Poe was feeding him.

“What do you think, Sammy? A birthday party with everyone? All the other kids?” she asked.

He bounced and screeched something that sounded mostly like 'yes,’ though he still hadn't quite figured out the  _ s _ and skipped it instead.

“Should we ask your dad?” she asked, and he drew his hand closer to his chest and shook his head.

“No,” he said very clearly, and when Rey laughed he burst into giggles.

“What's this? My spouses  _ and _ my son having fun without me?” Finn asked, grinning, as he rejoined them. 

There was a small child on his shoulders, but she presently realized the other children were having fun without her and had to be let down before Finn could get an answer. He shook his head fondly at the indecision of children and looked back at his family.

“I'm glad they're okay,” he told Poe and Rey with a small, relieved smile.

“Me, too,” Rey agreed. 

“Okay,” Poe said, ignoring them, the cogs in his devious mind working. “Okay. But what if instead of inviting two hundred kids to Sam’s birthday,  _ what if _ we make it their birthdays, too?” 

There was a pause of incomprehension, and Poe jumped on it. 

“It could look a little narcissistic, right?” he continued. “We get all these kids to show up and pay homage to our little guy, so what we do instead is—we maybe declare it Stormtrooper Lifeday, or something. All stormtroopers celebrate their lifedays on this day.  _ All of them _ , we even wish the stormtroopers still in the First Order a happy lifeday, you know. You know, hearts and minds kind of thing?”

Finn nodded. 

“And then even if they don't have families yet, they can still have a lifeday! I think it's a great idea. And the older stormtroopers can come too, if they haven't chosen lifedays yet,” he added, knowing many of them had not. Even Deeks had never celebrated a lifeday, which meant he would probably be as beside himself with excitement as the children.

“Great! So… How do we plan it?” Rey asked, and both Finn and Rey looked expectantly to Poe.

Poe opened his mouth, and then shut it. 

“Well, we need to talk to Dad.” 

…

Finn still wanted to talk to his mother, though, and wanted to introduce her to Sam—that was why they were here, after all. He went by her room several times to check if she was alone. 

“Want to meet your grandmother, Sam?” he asked the baby when he was done eating, and Sam exclaimed happily and reached to be picked up.

“Sweet Sammy,” Finn said fondly as he picked him up.

Sam blew a spit bubble and patted his cheek. Rey and Poe had gone to other duties, leaving Finn with his son, standing nervously outside Mara’s door. Archex had gone, and Dr. Kalonia wasn’t around, which he was grateful for. 

“Well, come in, Finn,” she said, and when he did she gasped at the sight of— “ _ Sam _ ?” 

Then her face clouded. “No, of course not…”

“Well, actually—sort of,” Finn said, reaching for his mother's hand. “This is mine and Rey and Poe’s son. We named him Sam, after—well, me. Because you named me that.”

Mara looked between them, face still unreadable—she looked confused, sad, angry maybe, but not at either of them—and Sam peered back at her solemnly.

“But you're not—how is he…? You're my Sam. But he's…also my Sam?” Mara asked.

She didn't reach to touch Sam, almost seeming afraid that none of this was real, but allowed Finn to lead her to sit.

“He's my clone,” he told her. “I imagine that’s pretty confusing.” 

Sam chose this moment to yawn cavernously and reach for Finn's shirt with both hands—flesh and mechno—causing Mara to gasp. The deformed hand at least made him different enough she knew he wasn’t her son, that time had indeed passed, and her son was grown, and a hero, a healer, and a leader. 

“He was the only one we could save,” Finn admitted quietly as Sam snuggled against his chest and he watched him, wondering if his small son was going to decide to take a nap, “He was the only one  _ I  _ could save.”

Mara reached up and touched his cheek gently, and Finn looked up at her.

“I am...sorry I couldn’t save you,” she whispered. “It looks like you did alright, though, yes? Can you—tell me what you remember? What you know, maybe, and then I will try to do the same. My past is—clouded.”

In spite of this, she sounded very lucid. Maybe as her memories sorted themselves out, her organized mind was better able to handle the present. Maybe Dr. Kalonia had her on medications that kept her neuroses to a minimum. Now it was less like trying to talk to Poe’s aged Nana and more like talking to Kes.  

“Well. We know from Rey’s vision that I was probably less than a year old—younger than Sam—when the First Order attacked whatever planet we were on. They took me and any other kids they could get their hands on, and we thought they killed everyone else. In the...dream, vision thing I had, I heard you yelling when they took me, you and another man, but then there was an explosion and, uh...” Finn trailed off. He remembered being so sure he'd just seen a vision of his mother and father dying, the feeling like his heart was breaking and going cold all at once.

“I guess after that I was raised like all the other children—taught to fight and march and shoot. Poe and Rey and I all rescued each other later on, and we fought Kylo Ren and the First Order.” Finn paused and watched Mara for a moment before continuing.

“And Rey went and found Luke. He was on this little ocean planet with a few islands. I guess that's where he went after everything happened with Kylo Ren. Rey said he mentioned once that his wife had been killed by Snoke and Ren, but he never mentioned a son. I'm not sure he knows he has one, much less that it's me,” Finn finished. 

It was still a strange thought to him. He'd thought his parents long dead—now he had two. It was still overwhelming, if he was honest.

Mara nodded, and was quiet a long time. Finally, “My brother.”

Finn looked at her, confused. 

“In Rey’s vision. The Empire took me from my parents when I showed Force aptitude, when I was young, though not as young as you. When Luke—” here she smiled, without seeming to know she was doing it, “brought me back into the light side of the Force, I tried to find my family. My birth family.”

She looked up and took Finn’s hand. “We are from the planet Haruun Kal. I didn’t find out I was pregnant until I arrived. You were born there. I—” here her face clouded. “I do not know if the Order was looking for me, or if they wanted the colony destroyed, just as the Empire did before. Force sensitivity is common among those who—who  _ were  _ there. I think you are right. They left no one alive but you and me. Perhaps some other children...”

“Do you know what happened after?” Finn asked, though he wasn't certain it was a question either of them wanted answered. They had their suspicions, after all, given that she eventually found her way back to Luke, albeit with no clear memory of her son. Finn wondered if she had seemed as confused then as when he'd found her, and just as quickly decided she probably had not. Luke surely would have noticed if his wife seemed not quite all there, wouldn’t he? It was beyond irritating that they couldn’t ask him now.

“Or—is there anything else you remember? We don't have a lot, I'm afraid. Luke...he mentioned you, but none of us ever asked for more than what he volunteered,” Finn told his mother. 

Then Finn hesitated. “But Poe—Leia said that you were gone for a few years, and came back— _ different _ .” 

There, he said it: the First Order—the Empire, then, still, maybe—did something to you that Leia didn’t trust. And maybe that happened  _ twice _ . 

Finn swallowed. “Do you think you were reconditioned?” 

Mara’s smile was tight. “Would you remember, if you were?” 

Finn looked down at their clasped hands and sighed at the curl of unease that left him feeling like he'd swallowed a rock. His mother, perhaps sensing this, squeezed his fingers gently.

“Finn?” she asked softly, and he shrugged. Sam, who had decided to watch Finn and Mara instead of napping, reached up to pat gently on his father's cheek.

“I...don't know. Probably not, unless they wanted you to,” he said, trying to think of anyone who had said from first-hand experience what it was like.

He couldn't remember anyone, just the whispered rumors and how occasionally someone would disappear and return acting just a little different, just a little more dedicated to the First Order, a little less likely to ask questions.Of course none of them had ever remembered being reconditioned. For about a week, they'd be unsettled by a chunk of missing memory, but they'd soon enough forget, and so would everyone else—or else they just stop thinking about it.

But he also hadn't known a single stormtrooper who hadn't been scared of reconditioning. Even Phasma had avoided being anywhere near the hall with the reconditioning rooms—he knew, because he'd seen her order others to that part of the base, when it had been necessary. She'd been very flippant about sending people, completely unconcerned...but he'd never known her to go near that hall if there was some other unfortunate trooper she could send.

“That is what I worry about, too,” Mara said softly. “What they might have made me think, or do. I have enough to atone for from my time as the Emperor’s Hand…” 

This appeared to be an old pain, though. “I wake up. Time is gone. Destruction in my wake. I did not remember my child, but my body did. And now...now I think I remember  _ some _ .”

“You remembered Sam,” Finn said. 

Upon hearing his name, Sam bounced in Finn's arms and screeched, then seemed to take an interest in Mara. He reached for her with his flesh have, the mechno-hand clenched tight to Finn's shirt for security.

“Can you tell me what else you remember?” Finn asked as he shifted so Sam wouldn't pull on Mara’s hair the way he sometimes did with Rey's. Gentle or not, now was not the time.

Mara, however, was distracted by Sam—enchanted by him—and the pained frown left her brow as she smiled at him. “Is he strong in the Force, like his mother?” 

Finn couldn’t be sure if she meant herself, or Rey.

“Actually, yes. Stronger than me...he makes things float sometimes, on accident. He hasn't started doing it on purpose yet,” he answered. 

Right now, for example, he could probably easily have floated Mara's hair over to him, but he didn't. Instead, he started fussing and squirming and reaching, having apparently decided that since Mara had acknowledged him, she should also pay attention to him.

“He's very sweet. Usually very easy-going, which is probably for the best if he's going to be close to the Force,” Finn said as he tried to wrangle his armful of squirmy child.

“May I hold him?” she asked, and smiled sadly. “I don’t remember holding you, but I know how to hold a baby.” 

“Yes, of course! I think that's what he wants, too,” Finn laughed and got Sam to stop wriggling long enough to hand him over without dropping him. Sam seemed uncertain, for a moment, but this was what he'd wanted, after all—to be closer to this woman who looked more like his daddy than anyone else he'd met, and who spoke kindly and gently and seemed a little sad.

He leaned back to look at her face and then smiled at her before babbling something only he understood.

“In the memory I had, you were holding me. You were singing, too, but I don't know what. That part of it was a really good memory,” Finn told Mara Jade as she got Sam settled in her arms.

Mara smiled, playing with Sam and letting him investigate her hair and her fingers. 

“The problem is,” she began with a tight smile, “is that not all the memories are good. For every one that comes back I have two of...being my old self. It is hard. But I want to remember you. I want to remember Luke, and Leia, Han and B—” 

Her eyes clouded over. Someone had told her about Han, and about Kylo Ren. “Does Leia think I turned Ben to the Dark side?” 

“No. Not exactly,” Finn said, wishing he had a more comforting answer. “She thinks Snoke used you—you were convenient, and you were a connection to Ben, so he used you to get to him,” he continued. He refused to believe she'd done it knowingly or willingly, but he wasn't so sure Leia felt the same, from what Poe had said.

She nodded, resigned, expecting this. “Ben was always...troubled. But, of course I would say that, if everything he has ever done is on my head, too.”

She played with Sam a little more, who gurgled contentedly and was now crawling around on the bed, trying shakily to get to his feet on the uneven surface. Then, “I am worried that if they let me go on purpose before, that they might have done it again. That is why I hid for so long, on Jedha. Maybe...I should go back. Hide again.”

“That wouldn't accomplish anything except maybe getting yourself killed,” Finn said, unexpectedly angry that she would suggest this. “We know the stupid little games Snoke plays, and we're ready for them. Luke and Rey even used the old temples to shield this place,” he explained.

He reached to touch his mother's shoulder, and she looked at him with that haunted, hunted look she'd worn back on Jedha, when she could only remembered that her son had died.

“You're safe here.  _ Please _ don't go,” he told her.

“But are the rest of you safe if I stay?” Mara asked, eyes hard. 

“As safe as we can be, in the middle of a war. If they wanted to use a Force user against us, they could use Rey. Or me. I probably have enough Force sensitivity to be useful, but I'm sure I don't have enough to defend myself. I'm an easy target, if they really wanted one,” Finn answered. He was dismayed at the direction this conversation had taken and didn't know how to steer it away from his mother trying to disappear just as soon as he'd found her.

Mara nodded. “Yes, I know. And if Leia wants me off the base, or in a cell, I will stay there. I want to...get to know you, my son, and your beautiful spouses, and my grandson.”

She smiled down at Sam. “He's my chance to have you all over again, in a way.”

“Leia will  _ not _ throw you in a cell,” Finn said, the implication clear: if Leia tried, Finn was going to have words with her. “And we could talk to Kes about somewhere for you to stay off-base, if you want to be close to Sam and the rest of us,” he suggested.

He couldn't imagine  _ wanting _ to stay on base if you had the option to leave it, but if his mother was more comfortable here, they would still see her every day.

Mara nodded distantly, like some of the stormtroopers did, the ones who had stopped caring what happened to their bodies. She looked up at the door, in the direction where Luke slept. “And...Luke… How did he...get like this?”

“He was protecting Rey. Kylo Ren ambushed us, and she gave herself up in exchange for him letting the rest of us—Me, Poe, Sam, and some of the other ex-stormtroopers—escape. Rey was fighting Ren, and Luke...projected himself or something. When we went to check on him, he was like this. Wedge said it happened at the same time we were rescuing Rey,” Finn answered. There had been no change, not even when they returned with Mara Jade. “I think he'll be glad to see you, when he wakes up. I don't think he ever stopped loving you, even though he thought you were dead.”

Finn remembered the fond, wistful smile Luke had given the three of them when he'd had to explain a Force Bond. It had been a sad smile, too, one that spoke of loss.

“He, um...he was explaining to me and Rey and Poe, one time, about Force Bonds.”  _ Gods _ , Finn thought,  _ way to bring up the most awkward story ever _ —and now he felt obligated to explain. “It was kind of an accident, really, see, because we sort of…did…something… And, well, Force Bond! And then we sort of showed up for duty, the three of us, because we didn't really. Uh, we didn't, you know,  _ know _ . We were just—” somewhere, a corner of his brain was screeching as it overheated, trying to find a way to make this less like  _ talking to the mother he had just met about sex _ , and failed. “Really happy? And then the General told us to take the rest of the day off and Poe didn't even get mad and Luke talked to us,” he finished, hurriedly, not looking at his mother or anywhere else. 

It wasn't like he hadn't told Jess about this, or been teased endlessly, along with Poe and Rey, by pilots, soldiers, and civilians alike. But this was his  _ mother _ . Somehow telling this all to his mother was  _ so much worse _ . Why was he like this?

Mara’s smile had grown throughout the telling, and now she was laughing, deep and warm, from her belly, as Finn tried to ignore her and keep trudging on:

“Anyway, the important thing: Luke never stopped loving you, but he also thinks Kylo Ren killed you.”

“Oh, Finn,” she said, her smile reaching down to her core. “Thank you for telling me... _ some _ of that.” 

She laughed again, and then her smile began to develop a sad tint. “Luke and I have a lot to talk about. I have Archex, now. He is a good man. Did...Luke not have someone else? Ever?”

“He...did, actually,” Finn answered, consciously ignoring the weirdness of his mother being with his old commander. 

Life was really weird, sometimes.

“Did you ever meet Wedge Antilles? He's another pilot, a defector. Kind of like you,” he said, and wondered if Luke had a type. “And me, I guess. He's kind of—” standoffish? dour? mildly terrifying?— “Quiet. But he would do anything for Luke. He was on the island with him when we found them.”

Mara nodded. “They always were good friends… You can tell Wedge: when Luke wakes up, I will not get in the way.” 

“I’ll tell him,” Finn said. He then tried remembering something to tell his mother that would perhaps make her laugh again—or smile, at least.

“So...it's Sam's lifeday, soon. And mine—we decided to celebrate them both at the same time. We were talking this morning, me and Rey and Poe, and we think we should celebrate  _ all  _ the stormtroopers’ lifedays on the same day. I thought, well, maybe you could help us! With planning, you know, or anything you want to help with,” he told her.

Sam added his own excited screech. 

“Or you could, at least, you know, you could be there,” Finn added. “Of course you’ll be there. Right?” 

“Finn.” Mara smiled, near tears at how  _ good  _ her son had become. “Of course I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay over the holidays, friends! Happy New Year! Thanks as always for all your support! 
> 
> We've just about caught up to our writing again, so we may not post promptly every week, but please subscribe to the series for our next installment!


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